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ORANGEBURG, S.C. (AP) — A white former police chief here was indicted on murder charges in the 2011 shooting death of an unarmed black man after an argument, a case that instantly drew comparisons to the Ferguson shooting and the chokehold death in New York. The indictment of Richard Combs, the former chief and sole officer in the small town of Eutawville (YOO'-tah-vihl), was released Thursday. He faces 30 years to life in prison if convicted in the death of Bernard Bailey. Combs' lawyer accused prosecutors of taking advantage of national outrage toward police and the justice system to get...

It is interesting to watch the aftermath of the Eric Garner Grand Jury decision coming so soon after Ferguson. “White Police Officer Once Again Kills Unarmed Black Man – And Gets Away with It” is already the reaction in many places. Sides are drawn and the usual suspects race-bait, pontificate, riot and ask for calm, or in Jesse Jackson’s case, donations. Other than there being a white police officer and a black man dying while resisting arrest, these cases are not similar, no matter what many would like you to believe. In one instance, the Grand Jury determined that Officer...

An unarmed Arizona man was shot dead by a Phoenix police officer who mistook a pill bottle for a handgun, police said. Police have yet to name the 30-year-old white officer, who fired off two shots that killed Rumain Brisbon, a 34-year-old black man, during an altercation Tuesday night during an investigation into a drug deal, police said. But witness accounts varied on what actually happened, sparking protests in Phoenix Thursday night as the fever pitch from the police killings of unarmed teen Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the chokehold death of Eric Garner on Staten Island, boiled over...

You say you want a revolution? Former NAACP president Benjamin Jealous just analogized the fear for their lives that black youth feel about police to the fear the colonists felt toward the "Redcoats"—British soldiers during the time of the American Revolution. Jealous, now with the leftist Center for American Progress​, made his inflammatory claim to Ronan Farrow on the latter's MSNBC show today. Rather than challenging Jealous, Farrow thanked him for his "impassioned take." Has it come to this? A significant civil rights leader analogizes race relations in the United States to the revolution that led to the creation of...

December 03, 2014 So Like Everyone On the Right is Now Outraged by the Garner Death Just Like They Were Outrage by the "Militarization of Police" in Ferguson I'm a dissenter. Frankly, I think everyone on the right is looking to prove "We're not one of those sorts of people who automatically defends anyone who kills a black person." And we did that in three Racial Incidents running. I know my first reaction in both Trayvon Martin's case, and in Michael Brown's case, was to side with the black victim. And maybe this is the wrong time to put my...

We have found the new normal in America. If you are truly outraged by some action of police, prosecutors, grand juries, or courts, you can shut down the heart of a great city. Thursday night, thousands of "protesters" disrupted the annual Christmas tree lighting at Rockefeller Center, conducted a "lie-in" in Grand Central, blocked Times Square, and shut down the West Side Highway that scores of thousands of New Yorkers use to get home. That the rights of hundreds of thousands of visitors and New Yorkers were trampled upon by these self-righteous protesters did not prevent their being gushed over...

CNN) -- The grand jury decisions not to indict officers in the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson and the killing of Eric Garner on Staten Island have been made. Unsurprisingly, some people agree with them and others do not. But dwelling on disagreement distracts us from dealing with the larger question at hand. What happens next? The answer seems rather simple. It is putting a plan into action that will be the difficult part. How can we move forward to allow the police departments of Ferguson, Missouri, and New York and those in many other cities to begin better...

As we saw last weekend at the start of the St. Louis Rams-Raiders game, we'll be dealing with the facts and symbolism of Michael Brown's death for a long time. "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" doesn't accurately describe what really happened when Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson shot Brown to death last summer. But it should be pretty clear to everyone by now that the facts don't matter that much anymore in the Michael Brown case. At least half the country, 99 percent of the liberal media and the Black Caucus in Congress apparently still believe the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot"...

There is some good debate and conversation happening in the wake of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases. But there is also plenty of nonsense. Consider this gem from the New York Times editorial of this morning about police arrests: "there can never be a justification for any lethal assault on an unarmed man." How absurd. In Ferguson, there is evidence that Michael Brown was attempting to wrest the officer's gun away. Should Darren Wilson have waited until Brown was successful before defending himself? Whatever the facts from Staten Island, if a single officer finds himself in a struggle...

Denver high school students protesting recent civilian deaths involving police chanted "Hit him again!" after a car struck four bicycle officers - injuring one critically - Wednesday night, the city's police union charged. Officer John Adsit underwent six hours of surgery Thursday for injuries sustained in the accident and was in critical, but stable condition. But the reaction of young students, reported by the Denver Post, left residents stunned and members of the Denver Police Protection Association angry. Students were heard chanting and cheering after the officers were hit. Teachers looked on and did not intervene while the students chanted,...

Like most people across the political spectrum, I approach the Eric Garner arrest video with the requisite amount of dread. What a shame. What a tragedy. What an unsettling thing to see a man on the day of his death, a premature end following a few moments of conflict with New York City police officers. Like many conservatives, I have just spent several days standing up for the Ferguson grand jury as it relied on actual evidence to reach a decision in the case of Michael Brown. Those of us who took that stand weathered the attacks of unhinged factions...

National statistics intended to track police killings show that hundreds of homicides committed by law-enforcement officers between 2007 and 2012 are not recorded by the FBI, the Wall Street Journal reports. More than 550 police killings during that span were missing from the national count of not attributed to the law-enforcement agency involved, the paper reports. The lack of data makes it impossible to determine how many people police kill each year. Demands for more transparency on such killings have been shoved into the spotlight after the August shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson....

Eric Garner and Michael Brown had much in common, not the least of which was this: On the last day of their lives, they made bad decisions. Epically bad decisions. Each broke the law — petty offenses, to be sure, but sufficient to attract the attention of the police. And then — tragically, stupidly, fatally, inexplicably — each fought the law. The law won, of course, as it almost always does. This was underscored yet again Wednesday when a Staten Island grand jury chose not to indict any of the arresting officers in the death in police custody of Garner...

A Phoenix police officer shot to death an unarmed black man during a struggle and authorities said the officer believed the individual had a gun, in the latest fatal incident amid national turmoil over the policing of black communities. The Phoenix Police Department said Rumain Brisbon, 34, was sitting in a black Cadillac SUV outside a convenience store on Tuesday evening, and that two witnesses told the officer the occupants of the vehicle were selling drugs. With police forces across the country under increased scrutiny over killings of unarmed black men, Phoenix police said in a statement that its officer...

On the same day one grand jury decided not to indict officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who was killed after being put in a chokehold last July, a different jury did indict 22-year-old Ramsey Orta, the man who captured Garner's death on camera. Orta was charged with weapon possession after being arrested on Aug. 2, less than one month after taping Garner's confrontation with police.

NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, WASHINGTON D.C.-- Sheriff Clarke talks about Ferguson Missouri and how politicians and irresponsible group. "Irresponsible Groups Descended on Ferguson MO Like Vultures on a Roadside Carcass."

PoliceOne.com is a discussion forum for law enforcement officers, and while anyone can access some of the site content, commenting privileges are available exclusively to verified police. The PoliceOne.com staff "confirm[s] the status of all officers registering for PoliceOne by calling that officer's department directly." That detail is important, because it means that these responses to the Eric Garner verdict were definitely made by actual police officers: ...

Attorney General Eric Holder today announced that the Department of Justice will open a civil rights investigation into the death of Eric Garner, the man who was killed in July during the course of an NYPD arrest. Sean Hannity pointed out tonight on "Hannity" that Holder has no problem investigating a case in which a grand jury has made a clear decision, but when it comes to the violence in Ferguson, he won't look into Michael Brown's stepfather potentially inciting riots. J. Christian Adams said that this Justice Department has "an enormous hostility toward the police," from Holder prejudging the...

... Pantaleo who applied the lethal chokehold on Eric Garner was supervised by an African-American female NYPD sergeant. Having that black sergeant in charge of that crime scene takes race out of the equation. As awful as Pantaleo’s actions appear on that video, at no time does that black sergeant order Pantaleo to stop choking Garner. With a population that is 70% white and 10% African-American, when a Staten Island grand jury is presented with a white cop supervised by a black sergeant applying a lethal chokehold, it eliminates the racial component. The grand jury was then left with the...

Protesters enraged by a grand jury's decision not to indict the officer whose chokehold killed Eric Garner took their cause to the New York City streets Wednesday, bringing traffic to a standstill. Hundreds chanted 'I can't breathe' as they marched through Midtown Manhattan or laid their bodies end to end on the city's West Side Highway. The protests, which carried on through to Thursday morning, remained civil and peaceful. They clogged Lincoln Tunnel, staged 'die-ins' in the middle of Grand Central Station and crossed the Brooklyn Bridge on foot as pockets of demonstrators across America's largest metropolis sought to spread...