Police perjury is the act of a police officer knowingly giving false testimony. It is typically used in a criminal trial to "make the case" against defendants believed by the police to be guilty when irregularities during the suspects' arrest or search threaten to result in their acquittal. It also can be extended to encompass substantive misstatements of fact to convict those whom the police believe to be guilty, procedural misstatements to "justify" a search and seizure, or even the inclusion of statements to frame an innocent citizen. More generically, it has been said to be "[l]ying under oath, especially by a police officer, to help get a conviction."
In the United States, a SWAT team is a police tactical unit that uses specialized or military equipment and tactics. Although they were first created in the 1960s to handle riot control or violent confrontations with criminals, the number and usage of SWAT teams increased in the 1980s and 1990s during the War on Drugs and later in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. In the United States by 2005, SWAT teams were deployed 50,000 times every year, almost 80% of the time to serve search warrants, most often for narcotics. By 2015 that number had increased to nearly 80,000 times a year. SWAT teams are increasingly equipped with military-type hardware and trained to deploy against threats of terrorism, for crowd control, hostage taking, and in situations beyond the capabilities of ordinary law enforcement, sometimes deemed "high-risk".
Radley Prescott Balko is an American journalist, author, blogger, and speaker who writes about criminal justice, the drug war, and civil liberties. In 2022, he began publishing his work on Substack after being let go from The Washington Post, where he had worked as an opinion columnist for nine years. Balko has written several books, including The Rise of the Warrior Cop and The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist.
CompStat—or COMPSTAT, short for COMPuter STATistics, is a computerization and quantification program used by police departments. It was originally set up by the New York City Police Department in the 1990s. Variations of the program have since been used in police departments across the world. According to a 2022 podcast by Peter Moskos with John Yohe and Billy Gorta, the name CompStat was suggested by detective Richard Mahere for the computer file name of the original program to comply with 8.3 filename conventions, short for "COMParative STATistics" and "COMPuter STATistics".
Michael Thomas Lansing is a former Major League Baseball second baseman who played for the Montreal Expos, Colorado Rockies, and the Boston Red Sox between 1993 and 2001. During his playing days, he had the nickname “The Laser.”
Police misconduct is inappropriate conduct and illegal actions taken by police officers in connection with their official duties. Types of misconduct include among others: coerced false confession, intimidation, false arrest, false imprisonment, falsification of evidence, spoliation of evidence, police perjury, witness tampering, police brutality, police corruption, racial profiling, unwarranted surveillance, unwarranted searches, and unwarranted seizure of property.
Human Rights in Mexico refers to moral principles or norms that describe certain standards of human behaviour in Mexico, and are regularly protected as legal rights in municipal and international law. The problems include torture, extrajudicial killings and summary executions, police repression, sexual murder, and, more recently, news reporter assassinations.
The Military Cooperation with Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies Act is a United States federal law enacted in 1981 that allows the United States Armed Forces to cooperate with domestic and foreign law enforcement agencies. Operations in support of law enforcement include assistance in counterdrug operations, assistance for civil disturbances, special security operations, counter-terrorism, explosive ordnance disposal (EOD), and similar activities. Constitutional and statutory restrictions and corresponding directives and regulations limit the type of support provided in this area. The legislation allows the U.S. military to give law enforcement agencies access to its military bases and its military equipment. The legislation was promoted during the Presidency of Ronald Reagan in the context of the War on drugs, and is considered a part of a general trend towards the militarization of police.
Law enforcement is one of three major components of the criminal justice system of the United States, along with courts and corrections. Although each component operates semi-independently, the three collectively form a chain leading from an investigation of suspected criminal activity to the administration of criminal punishment.
In the United States, a no-knock warrant is a warrant issued by a judge that allows law enforcement to enter a property without immediate prior notification of the residents, such as by knocking or ringing a doorbell. In most cases, law enforcement will identify themselves just before they forcefully enter the property. It is issued under the belief that any evidence they hope to find may be destroyed between the time that police identify themselves and the time they secure the area, or in the event where there is a large perceived threat to officer safety during the execution of the warrant.
The San Diego Police Department (SDPD) is the primary law enforcement agency for the city of San Diego, California. The department was officially established on May 16, 1889.
The history of law enforcement in the United Kingdom charts the development of law enforcement in the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It spans the period from the Middle Ages, through to the development of the first modern police force in the world in the nineteenth century, and the subsequent modernisation of policing in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Steven Timothy Hayne is a pathologist from the US state of Mississippi who attracted significant controversy surrounding his medical practices and testimony in criminal trials, most notably those of Cory Maye, Jimmie Duncan, and Tyler Edmonds.
Jose Guerena was a U.S. Marine veteran who served in the Iraq War and who was killed in his Tucson, Arizona, home on May 5, 2011, by the Pima County Sheriff's Department SWAT team. Deputies were executing a warrant to search Guerena's home while investigating a case involving marijuana being smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico.
Photography Is Not a Crime is an organization and news website that focuses on rights of civilians who photograph and film police and other government organizations in the United States. It was founded in 2007 following the arrest of its creator, Carlos Miller, a veteran news reporter and photojournalist, and incorporated in June 2014 as PINAC Inc., a Florida not-for-profit corporation. In December 2022 Carlos Miller declared the site dead.
The Hallandale Beach Police Department is the law enforcement agency of Hallandale Beach, Florida. Its headquarters is located in a municipal building at 400 South Federal Highway, Hallandale Beach, FL 33009. In 2022, the chief of police is Michel Michel.
The Johnston Police Department is the primary law enforcement agency in the town of Johnston, Rhode Island. The town has a population of about 29,000. The department is headed by Richard S. Tamburini. It is headquartered at 1651 Atwood Avenue.
The militarization of police is the use of military equipment and tactics by law enforcement officers. This includes the use of armored personnel carriers (APCs), assault rifles, submachine guns, flashbang grenades, sniper rifles, and SWAT teams. The militarization of law enforcement is also associated with intelligence agency–style information gathering aimed at the public and political activists and with a more aggressive style of law enforcement. Criminal justice professor Peter Kraska has defined militarization of police as "the process whereby civilian police increasingly draw from, and pattern themselves around, the tenets of militarism and the military model".
Stephen Downing is an American screenwriter, producer, activist, and investigative journalist who began his screenwriting career in the 1960s while still working as a Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officer. Most of Downing's pre-1980 writing and producing credits appeared under pseudonyms to escape notice of the LAPD. Downing is active in the movement to end the international war on drugs and the militarization of police in America. In 2011, Downing became a board member of Law Enforcement Action Partnership, formerly known as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), after years representing the group as a speaker. He left the board in 2019, but is still an advisory board member who gives speeches and writes op-ed pieces on behalf of the group. He also volunteers his time as an investigative journalist, with a focus on police corruption and reform, for a local print newspaper in Long Beach, California. As a television producer and screenwriter he is best known for the series Walking Tall, RoboCop: The Series, T. J. Hooker and MacGyver.
William J. Lewinski is a retired psychology professor and expert on police use of force at his own Force Science Institute, founded in 2004. He provides training to police and serves as an expert witness in court cases.
