"Police identify officer fatally shot in New Mexico traffic stop" Associated Press May 27, 2015
RIO RANCHO, N.M. — A police officer in a suburb of Albuquerque decided to make one more traffic stop before his shift finished Monday night. It ended up costing him his life.
Rio Rancho Police Chief Michael Geier detailed the last moments of Officer Gregg Benner’s shift during a news conference Tuesday in which police identified a known gang member with an extensive criminal record that included a manslaughter conviction and weapons charges as the man suspected of fatally shooting the officer.
Andrew Romero, 28, was a passenger in the vehicle that Benner attempted to stop just after 8 p.m. Monday near a fast-food restaurant, Geier said.
‘‘It started out as, for all practical purposes, a routine traffic stop, something our officers do daily,’’ the chief said. ‘‘Officer Benner is a hardworking, very motivated officer, so I believe he was just following up on inquiries he was making.’’
Related:
Porter's Police Brutality
Cincinnati College Cop Disposed of Dubose
This Blog is Bland
Routine traffic stops lead to trouble now.
After a short chase through a shopping center parking lot, the vehicle stopped near a library and post office. As Benner approached again, Geier said the passenger shot at the officer with a handgun.
Benner was hit multiple times in the torso and didn’t have a chance to draw his weapon, Geier said.
Benner fell to the ground, and a distress call went out over the radio, according to investigators. Within minutes, residents who were nearby and an off-duty paramedic came to the officer’s aid.
He later died at a hospital.
Before the shooting, a warrant had been issued for Romero for probation violations. The chief said during the news conference that charges related to the shooting were pending and that Romero could face both state and federal charges.
Romero was taken into custody in the Albuquerque area early Tuesday after he and a group of men were seen robbing a gas station. Several agencies helped with the arrest about 20 miles from where Benner was shot, Bernalillo County sheriff’s Sgt. Aaron Williamson said.
The investigation into the shooting and the robbery is ongoing, authorities said.
Benner, 49, was a military veteran who had been with the Rio Rancho Police Department for four years. He is survived by his wife and five adult children. He was expecting two grandchildren.
‘‘As the wife and daughter of law enforcement officers, this terrible tragedy hits close to home and I am absolutely heartbroken,’’ New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez said in a statement. ‘‘Sadly, this underscores the danger that our police officers face every time they walk out the door to keep our families safe. As a former prosecutor, it is my hope that justice is served quickly.’’
Rio Rancho Mayor Greggory Hull said the tight-knit city was mourning Benner’s death. ‘‘Our police officers hold a special place in our hearts as they lay their lives on the line every day protecting our safety and this is a stark reminder of their sacrifice,’’ Hull said in a statement.
At the shooting scene Tuesday, a maze of yellow crime-scene tape cordoned off the area between the library and post office. A makeshift memorial of flowers and American flags began to take shape by midday as investigators worked to unravel the events that led to the shooting. Dozens of small cones placed throughout the crime scene marked pieces of potential evidence.
At police headquarters in the usually sleepy bedroom community, flags flew at half-staff.
‘‘It’s been a jolt to the community,’’ said City Councilor Dawnn Robinson, who noted that people move to Rio Rancho because it’s quiet.
The Rio Rancho Police Department was founded in 1981, and its last officer to die in the line of duty was killed in a car crash in October 2014 while responding to a domestic violence call.
Hull ordered all flags in the city to fly at half-staff in honor of Benner. A candlelight vigil was planned for Tuesday night at one of the city’s parks.
--more--"
They have had their problems as well, but just tragic accidents thank God.
Better call 911 though:
"Panicked teen details hang-up by 911 dispatcher" Associated Press July 30, 2015
ALBUQUERQUE — A 911 caller said Wednesday that she was panicked about a friend being shot but stayed as calm as possible before a dispatcher told her to ‘‘deal with it yourself’’ and hung up.
Esperanza Quintero, 17, said she wished dispatcher Matthew Sanchez had done more to help after her friend Jaydon Chavez-Silver was shot in June. He later died. In the recording, Quintero snaps at Sanchez for repeatedly asking whether Chavez-Silver is breathing.
After several exchanges, it seemed from the tape that Sanchez hung up on the caller in mid-sentence. He resigned from his job a day after the 911 recording was released.
Fire Department spokeswoman Melissa Romero said Sanchez had dispatched an ambulance before he hung up and that it arrived less than five minutes after it was sent....
--more--"
Related: "A Lawrence 911 operator who has been disciplined in the past for turning away Spanish-speaking callers is in trouble again, city officials said Wednesday."
"Woman, 82, waited hours for Milwaukee police" Associated Press July 25, 2015
MILWAUKEE — An 82-year-old woman waited three hours for Milwaukee police to respond to her call for help after she was sexually assaulted, according to Police Department records.
The department has been criticized for long response times in the past, and a spokesman acknowledged this one was ‘‘excessive.’’
After walking home, the woman called 911. The call was initially given top priority, but after the woman refused to have paramedics come to her home for medical care her call was downgraded, according to the records.
The victim at one point told a dispatcher she had refused medical treatment because she was worried about paying an ambulance bill. The woman, who has difficulty with her sight, then called police again and asked if she could take a shower. The dispatcher advised her not to in order to preserve evidence.
After just over three hours, a squad responded....
That's worse than Detroit!
At least they didn't hang up on her.
--more--"
She's still in the tub.
"Thousands mourn slain Nebraska officer" Associated Press May 27, 2015
OMAHA — Omaha police officer Kerrie Orozco was one day away from going on maternity leave to care for the daughter she had delivered prematurely three months earlier when she answered a call to help a fellow officer.
Within minutes, Orozco lay in a yard with a fatal wound. She had been shot by a man wanted for an earlier shooting.
On Tuesday, the 29-year-old Iowa native’s family and close friends honored her at a church funeral in Omaha. Hundreds of her colleagues also attended the service, while thousands more police, firefighters, and emergency workers who traveled from around the country watched a video feed at an arena.
Orozco, a member of the department’s antigang unit, was hit just above her protective vest by one bullet in the shooting last Wednesday. Another officer returned fire, shooting 26-year-old Marcus Wheeler. Both Orozco and the suspect died at an Omaha hospital.
Orozco was the first Omaha officer in more than 10 years to die while serving.
Before her daughter, Olivia Ruth, was born prematurely on Feb. 17, Orozco’s original due date had been Tuesday. Instead, it became Orozco’s funeral date after Marcus Wheeler opened fire on officers trying to arrest him.
Orozco had postponed her maternity leave while her baby remained in a hospital prenatal care unit. The infant was to be released from the hospital the day after her mother was killed. Donations to Orozco’s family, including for a college fund for Olivia Ruth, have poured in.
Orozco also was a stepmother to Natalia, 8, and Santiago, 6, who are the children of her husband, Hector Orozco Lopez. The family lived in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Orozco was a native of nearby Walnut, Iowa.
She volunteered for the Girl Scouts, Special Olympics and various community outreach programs and had been given the Police Department’s Outstanding Volunteer Service Award this spring. Orozco also had coached an inner-city Omaha baseball team for years. Players, who knew her as ‘‘Coach K,’’ attended her funeral.
‘‘I can’t think of a better representative of our profession than Kerrie Orozco,’’ Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer said at the service. Schmaderer had helped train Orozco when she was a police recruit. In the years that followed, he said, he simply came to know her as his friend.
‘‘She got people to look past the fact that she was a police officer,’’ he said. ‘‘I see her legacy as that of breaking down barriers.’’
Omaha probation officer Kristina Reiter, who worked with Orozco and watched the funeral on video inside the arena, said, ‘‘She treated everyone with respect. Even those people she arrested, she didn’t talk down to or belittle.’’
Those leaving the funeral were met by thousands of people who braved rain and unseasonably cool temperatures to line streets along the funeral procession route. Orozco’s casket was taken to a Council Bluffs cemetery for her burial after the service.
--more--"
Related: Suspect sought in death of officer
My printed Globe included shootings in New York that I had to search for.
"Suspect hunted in killing of Memphis officer; Police were searching Sunday for a male suspect in the fatal shooting of a patrol officer during a traffic stop in Memphis" by Adrian Sainz Associated Press August 03, 2015
MEMPHIS — Police were searching Sunday for a male suspect in the fatal shooting of a patrol officer during a traffic stop in Memphis.
Police Director Toney Armstrong identified the suspect as Tremaine Wilbourn, 29, a passenger in a car that was being investigated by Officer Sean Bolton on Saturday night.
Armstrong said Bolton, 33, came across a 2002 Mercedes parked illegally in a neighborhood in southeast Memphis. Bolton shined his squad car’s spotlight into the car and Wilbourn got out of the car and scuffled with the officer before shooting him, Armstrong said.
Armstrong said the officer apparently had come upon a drug deal. Bolton was a former Marine and served a tour of duty in Iraq, police said.
The US Marshal’s office has offered to help search for Wilbourn, who fled on floot and was described as armed and dangerous. Wilbourn was on supervised release after serving a federal sentence for robbery.
Bolton was shot near one of the main streets in a working-class area of southeast Memphis. Police said a civilian had used Bolton’s radio to notify police about the shooting.
Bolton, who was shot multiple times, was taken in critical condition to a hospital, where he died.
Police officers wearing protective vests descended on an apartment complex in southeast Memphis, about three miles from the scene of the shooting. Detectives found a handgun from a field next to the apartment complex and a car was recovered.
Bolton is the third Memphis officer to be fatally shot in slightly more than four years. Officer Tim Warren was killed while responding to a shooting at a downtown Memphis hotel in July 2011. In December 2012, Officer Martoiya Lang was killed while serving a warrant.
Mayor A.C. Wharton Jr. said Bolton’s death ‘‘speaks volumes about the inherent danger of police work’’ and asked others to ‘‘pray for the family and pray for our city.’’ During past police shootings, both Wharton and Armstrong have said too many violent criminals are out on the street and have easy access to guns.
It shifts the whole "debate," doesn't it?
‘‘The men and women in blue have certain rules of engagement that they have to follow, but at any given minute in a 24-hour day they’re dealing with folks who have no rules of engagement,’’ Wharton said.
Jason Mendoza, a minister at Woodland Presbyterian Church, said Bolton served as the best man at the wedding of his brother, Brian Bolton, this summer. Church member Pam Haley said Bolton’s father died about a month ago. Brian is a member of the church.
During the church’s morning service, Mendoza asked worshipers to pray for the Bolton family. ‘‘Lord, lift up Brian and his family,’’ Mendoza said.
In Baltimore, which just ended its most deadly month in 43 years, officials said 11 people were shot, two of them fatally, in the first two days of August.
The weekend attacks included one in northwest Baltimore in which seven people were shot.
Acting Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said Sunday at a news conference that he believes the multiple-victim shooting was ‘‘a retaliatory act of violence.’’ Davis said one of the victims is a documented member of the Black Guerilla Family gang, and that two others had been victims of gang-related shootings in previous years.
The weekend’s violence follows a disturbing rise in homicides in Baltimore over the past three months, reaching a high in July with 45 killings, the most the city has seen in a single month since 1972.
That's near North Carolina, isn't it?
In New York City, two people were killed and 11 others wounded in three shootings early Sunday, including nine people hurt when gunfire broke out at a backyard party in Brooklyn, police said Sunday.
The gunfire at the party in the East New York section of Brooklyn started around 2:15 a.m., after a dispute, police said. Nine people were shot — six women and three men, most with wounds to their legs. Police said the injuries weren’t life-threatening. Four other people sustained cuts and bruises from the disturbance.
I'll bet alcohol was involved.
A neighbor told the Daily News he saw bodies on the ground. ‘‘Everybody was laying down till the shooting stopped, and then they got up and scattered,’’ said Faylo Alston. ‘‘They looked afraid for their lives.’’
The first of the three shootings was at a playground in the Bronx around 1:30 a.m. Sunday. Officers responding to a 911 call found three people with gunshot wounds. A 20-year-old man had been shot in the chest and was pronounced dead at the scene. He was identified as Christian Garcia, of the Bronx.
A 25-year-old man had been shot in the leg, and a 17-year-old girl had been shot in the buttocks. They were both hospitalized in stable condition.
Authorities said a man was also killed in another Brooklyn shooting that happened about the same time opposite the Whitman Houses in the Fort Greene section. The 46-year-old man was shot multiple times. No identification has been released.
Investigations into all three shootings are ongoing. No arrests have been made.
The violence came after several days of relative calm across the city.
--more--"
Did you see the source?
"Suspect in Memphis officer’s killing surrenders" Associated Press August 04, 2015
MEMPHIS — An ex-convict accused of fatally shooting a police officer who interrupted a drug deal turned himself in Monday, ending a two-day search, authorities said.
Tremaine Wilbourn, 29, is accused of killing Memphis police Officer Sean Bolton on Saturday night after Bolton approached a car on a street known as an oasis amid a troubled neighborhood.
‘‘I think he felt the walls closing in and thought it would be in his best interest to turn himself in,’’ Police Director Toney Armstrong said.
Armstrong spoke briefly to Wilbourn and the suspect told him: ‘‘I want you to know that one, I'm not a cold-blooded killer, and two, I am not a coward.’’ Armstrong had used that word to describe Wilbourn during the search.
On Saturday night, police allege, Wilbourn was a passenger in a 2002 Mercedes-Benz that was parked illegally in a southeast Memphis neighborhood. Bolton approached the car, Wilbourn got out of the Mercedes, and the two men got into a struggle, police said.
Wilbourn took out a gun and fired, striking Bolton multiple times. Then Wilbourn and the driver ran away. The driver later turned himself in, and was released without charges. Police sought Wilbourn on a first-degree murder warrant. His first court appearance is expected Tuesday.
Officers said they found 1.7 grams of marijuana in the car.
According to court documents, witnesses to the officer’s shooting identified Wilbourn in a photo lineup.
--more--"
"Pa. officer dies after fall during chase" Associated Press July 13, 2015
SCRANTON, Pa. — A police officer who suffered a head injury in a fall while chasing three teenage robbery suspects died from his injuries Sunday, police said.
Scranton patrol officer John Wilding died a day after falling some 15 feet after jumping a fence in pursuit of a trio of 17-year-olds now in custody, Police Chief Carl Graziano said.
Graziano asked the public to ‘‘keep Officer Wilding and his family in your prayers during this time of sorrow.’’
--more--"
Officials remove the body of a suspect shot by police from a soybean field as members of various Lebanon County law enforcement agencies investigate a police involved shooting in the village of Campbelltown in South Londonderry Township on Monday, July 3, 2015. Police responded to a burglary at the Horseshoe Pike Gun Shop when they encountered the suspect and were fire upon. Police returned fire and the suspect died in a soybean field (Photo by Jeremy Long, Lebanon Daily News).Are you sure it wasn't an onion field?
Top cop will prosecute:
"AG charged in Pa. grand jury leak" Associated Press August 06, 2015
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — Pennsylvania’s attorney general was charged Thursday with leaking secret grand jury information to strike back at her critics, then lying about it under oath, in a case that could spell the downfall of the state’s highest-ranking female politician.
Kathleen Kane leaked the material to a political operative to pass it on to the media ‘‘in hopes of embarrassing and harming former state prosecutors she believed, without evidence, made her look bad,’’ Montgomery District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said.
Kane, the first woman elected attorney general in Pennsylvania, was charged with perjury, obstruction, conspiracy, and other offenses. The 49-year-old Democrat is expected to surrender to authorities within days.
‘‘No one is above the law, not even the chief law enforcement officer of the state of Pennsylvania,’’ Ferman said. She called it ‘‘a sad day for the citizens of Pennsylvania and a sad day for all of us in law enforcement.’’
It always is, especially when it is a woman or black Democrat.
Kane has portrayed herself as a victim of payback for taking on a corrupt, old-boy law enforcement network and exposing state employees for exchanging pornographic e-mails. She vowed to stay in office and fight the charges.
I'm was wondering what she uncovered.
‘‘A resignation would be an admission of guilt,’’ she said, ‘‘and I’m not guilty.’’
The charges represent a new low in Kane’s tumultuous three years in office, a period that has seen an exodus of top aides, fumbled corruption cases, and feuds with former prosecutors who served under her Republican predecessors.
Governor Tom Wolf called on the former rising star to resign, echoing newspaper editorial pages across the state in recent months.
The charges against her allege she struck back by leaking information to the Philadelphia Daily News last year that made it look as if prosecutors botched a 2009 probe into whether a Philadelphia NAACP official misused state job-training grants. The official was never charged.
The NAACP probe was headed by Frank Fina, who was a top prosecutor before Kane got elected. In court papers, Kane was accused of spilling the information to get even with Fina.
--more--"
"Pa. man upset with baby name kills 2" Associated Press August 06, 2015
PITTSBURGH — A man upset that his ex-girlfriend wouldn’t name their baby after him fatally stabbed her and beat her 72-year-old grandmother to death, police said.
Cesar Mazza, 25, of Pittsburgh, was charged with two counts of criminal homicide and a charge of kidnapping his 11-week-old son.
Police found the bodies of the child’s mother, 19-year-old Tionna Banks, and Banks’s grandmother, Valorie Crumpton, at Crumpton’s home May 7. Banks had failed to return to a group home for at-risk women and girls after she was given a weekend pass to visit Crumpton.
At the time the women were killed, Banks had a protection-from-abuse order against Mazza that required him to stay away from her. He was also awaiting trial on charges that he punched Banks, stomped on her abdomen, and dragged her down some steps in November.
‘‘The dispute reportedly arose from Banks’s unwillingness to name their unborn child after Mazza,’’ police said. Banks named the baby Vaughn, police said.
--more--"
"Man who claims boy choked is charged with murder" AP August 12, 2015
DAYTON, Ohio — A man who claimed a 2-year-old choked on a Pop Tart has been charged with murder in the boy’s death, less than a year after the man’s release from prison on a child endangering charge, a prosecutor’s spokesman said Tuesday.
Justin Payne, 26, of Dayton, called 911 from an apartment on Saturday morning to say that his girlfriend’s child apparently choked on the toaster pastry while Payne was in the bathroom and that the boy was breathing heavily.
The Montgomery County coroner’s office said the child, Jacob Barker, died Sunday from ‘‘blunt force trauma’’ to his head, neck, and torso. The office on Tuesday ruled the case a homicide.
Montgomery County Prosecutor’s spokesman Greg Flannagan said Tuesday that Payne has been charged with murder, involuntary manslaughter, and two counts of endangering children.
A judge then set his bond at $1 million on the new charges.
Payne didn’t have an attorney, and probably will get a court-appointed counsel. The prosecutor’s office indicated his case will be taken before a grand jury.
Payne was arrested Saturday and initially jailed on a felonious assault charge.
Records show Payne pleaded no contest in June 2012 to a child endangering charge involving an infant and was released last November.
Court records show that child was less than 2 months old and suffered serious injury, but survived and is now 4 years old.
The boy’s funeral services are scheduled for Thursday.
--more--"
Those are the hot topics in Pennsylvania, and that's the closest I got to home.
For the record, I think ALL LIVES MATTER, and that includes animals and plants. Any needless and wanton destruction is wrong regardless of life form.
Those are the hot topics in Pennsylvania, and that's the closest I got to home.
For the record, I think ALL LIVES MATTER, and that includes animals and plants. Any needless and wanton destruction is wrong regardless of life form.
