Free Republic

PORTSMOUTH, Va. (WAVY) – Imagine you’re up watching our late night news when you hear your back door rattling, then see a red laser pointed on your chest. One Portsmouth man claims that happened to him. Brandon Watson said he was protecting his family when his wife heard noises in the back yard on January 3, 2013: “She said, ‘oh my gosh, someone is int he backyard.’” The noises got closer and then she heard the clicking of the backdoor handle. In a neighborhood where weapons are everywhere, Brandon Watson didn’t hesitate to grab his own legally purchased gun. It...

"The conflict between law enforcement and armed military personnel in the community around Fort Hood, one of America’s largest military bases, has recently and repeatedly involved the issue of gun control —....The conflict reached a fever pitch last month, when Texas police arrested an active-duty Army sergeant for “rudely displaying” a hunting rifle. The sergeant, C.J. Grisham, established an online legal defense fund after he was, in his words, “illegally arrested and disarmed” for carrying the firearm.... -Video of the incident obtained by The Daily Caller shows officers defending their behavior to Grisham while restraining him.... “In this day and...

What started as a walk to the park with his dogs ended with a trip to the hospital for a Denver dog owner. 32-year-old Mark Ashford says he was beaten black and blue by two Denver Police officers. "They punched him and pinned him up against the fence and forced his head into the concrete." Ashford's attorney, Will Hart, said the beating that was caught on camera is a clear case of Excessive More..Force. "This happened when he was walking his dogs, he has a conversation with another citizen that the police officer doesn't like and as a result, he...

PHOENIX (CN) - A homeowner says a Phoenix police officer shot him six times in the back during a 911 home-invasion call, and the 911 tape recorded the officer's partner saying, "That's all right. Don't worry about it. I got your back. ... We clear?" The family says the officers were not aware that the 911 call was still recording as they spoke about covering up the shooting. In their complaint in Maricopa County Court, Anthony and Lesley Arambula say an armed intruder "crashed through the front window" of their home on Sept. 17, 2008 and ran into one of...

In 2007, Shreveport police officer Wiley Willis arrested 38-year-old Angela Garbarino on suspicion of drunken driving. While in custody, as captured on the video below, Garbarino began arguing with Willis about what she said was her right to make a phone call. About a minute later, Willis walked over and turned off the video camera. When the camera returns back on, Garbarino was lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood. She was later photographed with severe facial injuries that looked to have come from a beating. Willis’ attorney stated that she tripped and fell while the...

JERICHO, Ark. – It was just too much, having to return to court twice on the same day to contest yet another traffic ticket, and Fire Chief Don Payne didn't hesitate to tell the judge what he thought of the police and their speed traps. The response from cops? They shot him. Right there in court.

LAVONIA, Ga. (ABP) -- Members of a Southern Baptist church in Northeast Georgia want answers about the police-shooting death of their 29-year-old pastor in a drug-sting operation gone wrong. Jonathan Ayers, pastor of Shoal Creek Baptist Church in Lavonia, Ga., died during the night of Sept. 1, hours after being shot by undercover police officers outside a gas station where he had just gotten money from an ATM machine. The Stephens County Sheriff's Office initially identified the shooting victim as a suspect involved in a drug transaction. Later officials clarified that drug enforcement agents were not investigating Ayers, but a...

Plainclothes officers shot and killed a small-town pastor when the 28-year-old father-to-be resisted efforts to question him about a passenger in his car who was the target of a drug sting, authorities said. Jonathan Paul Ayers of Shoal Creek Baptist Church in Lavonia wasn't targeted in the probe that ended in gunfire at a gas station Tuesday, Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman John Bankhead said. But drug task-force agents opened fire on him after he tried to avoid them, putting his car in reverse and striking one of the officers. Bankhead said agents approached Ayers after he dropped a woman...

<p>WHEN AGNES LAWLESS and three friends were inside a Lukoil convenience store in the Northeast at 3 a.m. last August, they'd all but forgotten the fender-bender in which they'd been involved moments earlier.</p> <p>There was little damage, and the other driver had left the scene, near Northeast Philadelphia Airport.</p>

"They hit the door right here and the door flew open," says Mike Hasenei, standing outside his Elkridge home. His wife, Phyllis, was watching television with her 12-year old daughter when members of the Howard County Police Tactical Team came through the door. "They had guns pointed at us. You have 25 guys coming in here all dressed in black and all that we saw were their eyes, and they're screaming 'Hands in the air!'" Members of the team were acting upon a tip that an assault rifle, magazines and hollow-point bullets stolen from a marked police car the night...

More than a month after Sam Salter wound up in the Ramsey County jail for two nights, the 40-year-old adjunct college instructor from Hudson, Wis., is still fuming. "You feel totally helpless," he said. At the end of a New Year's Eve traffic stop on Interstate 94 in St. Paul, State Patrol Sgt. Carrie Rindal rammed Salter's 2001 Toyota Sienna van, causing $1,500 damage to his vehicle, and arrested him at gunpoint while his three children, ages 2, 3 and 6, sat in the van. His wife had to pick up the kids as he was taken to jail. Rindal...

Collateral raid damage In January 2007, a SWAT team in Lima, Ohio, shot and killed Tarika Wilson, a 26-year-old mother, during a drug raid at the home of her boyfriend, Anthony Terry. When the unarmed Wilson was shot, she was kneeling on the ground, complying with police orders. She was holding her 1-year-old son, Sincere, who was also shot, losing his left hand. A subsequent investigation revealed that Officer Joseph Chavalia heard another officer shooting Terry’s two dogs, mistook the noise for hostile gunfire, panicked, and fired blindly into the room where Wilson was kneeling. Chavalia was charged with involuntary...

A Chicago Police officer pleaded guilty today to a civil rights violation for beating a 60-year-old man who was handcuffed and shackled to a wheelchair. ">snip<"

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has a simple, blunt message for hunters in Wisconsin: When a DNR warden asks you to give up your legal firearm, do so, plain and simple, no matter what. What's more, that goes for all citizens, the agency has asserted. Citizens with firearms, the DNR argues, should always do exactly what law enforcement officers tell them to do, regardless of the circumstances of the situation. To which one former hunter education instructor for the department has an equally simple and blunt response: The agency's directive is unconstitutional, plain and simple, and citizens don't have...

It was a little before 8 at night when the breaker went out at Emily Milburn's home in Galveston. She was busy preparing her children for school the next day, so she asked her 12-year-old daughter, Dymond, to pop outside and turn the switch back on. As Dymond headed toward the breaker, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, "You're a prostitute. You're coming with me." Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men...

Prince George's County police Chief Melvin C. High said yesterday that a suburban Washington mayor and his wife were "innocent victims of drug traffickers"....

Police said yesterday they have cleared Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo and his family of any wrongdoing in connection with a package of marijuana that police intercepted en route to his home, leading to a violent raid in which deputy sheriffs killed the family's two dogs. Prince George's County Police Chief Melvin C. High delivered the news in a telephone call Thursday to Calvo, saying police and State's Attorney Glenn F. Ivey determined that Calvo and his family were innocent victims caught up in a drug-smuggling ring. High exonerated the mayor and his family and expressed regret that they were...

LA County Gun Task Force Serving Search Warrants LAPD & LASO Might Be Knocking On Your Door Next! LA County Gun Task Force Serving Search Warrants Officers from the Los Angeles County Gun Task Force in CA have begun serving search warrants on residents in that county who are suspected of holding un-registered "Assault Rifles" including 50 BMG target rifles. If you or any of your friends have not complied with the provisions of AB-50 that require you to register any 50 BMG rifles you own, you may very well expect a knock on your door at any time. This...