Rep. John Becker doubles down on his recent comments about the tasing of an 11-year-old for allegedly shoplifting.

Between 2001 and 2017, the department justified officers in 99 percent of use-of-force cases, according to data released through a public records request.

Jeffery Parker was shot to death by a police officer in his Huntsville home. A grand jury handed up an indictment for murder, but the mayor and City Council appear to be throwing their support behind the officer.

State Senate candidate Julia Salazar explains how sex workers’ rights is a key part of reforming criminal justice in New York.

Community outrage mounts over Officer Andrew Mitchell’s killing of Dalton during an attempted prostitution arrest.

An 11-month prosecution of a ‘forcible touching’ case in Manhattan sharply diverges from the office’s treatment of Harvey Weinstein, defense attorneys say.

Off-duty law enforcement officers are using state resources to work side jobs for the pipeline company.

Critics say the Berkeley Police Department’s unusual practice of posting anti-fascist protesters’ mugshots on Twitter endangers activists and violates free speech rights.

After the Gun Trace Task Force scandal rocked the police department, plainclothes policing was spurned. But a recently resigned commissioner championed plainclothes units, a decision the department seems to be sticking with.

Local advocates are struggling with a new immigration memo that makes it more difficult to support these survivors.

A bill introduced in the state would require all chronic pain patients to enter into an agreement with their doctor before being prescribed opioid medication for the first time.

A former Baltimore cop questions how a department with a nearly half-billion-dollar budget that is riven by rampant corruption and brutality, bloated overtime spending, and unaccounted for patrol officers can continue to justify its existence

A white cop joked about bringing explosives to a Black Lives Matter protest in Columbus with no consequences. A black cop joked about ‘black on black’ crime and may be fired.

Grassroots group VOCAL-NY is teaching people with substance use disorder how to avoid getting ensnared in the criminal justice system.

In the wake of Nia Wilson’s murder, it’s critical that calls for justice in response to anti-Black violence are not contingent upon appeals to white-approved notions of innocence and respectability.

New records obtained by the Appeal show the account seems to have been monitoring Black Lives Matter activists for years.

A community group met with the Bastrop County sheriff in an effort to build trust between the sheriff’s office and the immigrant community. Then, the sheriff ran a sting that led to more than one dozen arrestees being handed over to ICE.

Faya Rose Touré, a 73-year-old former judge, says she’s determined to fight the charges against her.

Police appear to have used a fake Facebook account to ‘friend’ activists and archive who ‘liked’ their posts.

Groups like the Loop and DanceSafe test drugs like Ecstasy and warn users of high dosages and adulterants, but federal legislation from the early 2000s has live music promoters wary of their brand of harm reduction.

Jurors were barred from hearing about the eight civil rights lawsuits against Detective Jeremiah Williams.

A onetime gang liaison for the Baltimore Police Department writes that its database is racist and error-ridden.

Earl McNeil’s family is demanding answers from the National City, California, police department.

Advocacy group demands an end to traffic checkpoints concentrated in Black and Latinx areas.

“Jail is not a country club,” the Bristol County sheriff said. “That’s why once you’ve done time in the Bristol County House of Corrections, you won’t want to come back.”

A new lawsuit says Riverside County’s probation officers threaten to prosecute kids for ‘pre-delinquent’ behavior.

Lawrence Parrish faces charges including aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and remains jailed on $500,000 bond even though the Austin police admitted he never shot at them.

A former Baltimore Police officer says that a plan to flood the streets with local and federal law enforcement is likely to yield more of the same ineffective ‘broken windows’-style arrests.

A Pennsylvania hate crime statute is being used by law enforcement to punish angry arrestees.

The solution to problems like unsolved homicides, especially in communities of color, cannot be reinvestment in institutions that wage violence against them.

The King County Sheriff’s Office told reporters Tommy Le had a knife. He was actually holding a pen.

Surveillance video sheds some light on the police raid that killed Yang Song last year while, advocates say, the raids continue.

From local charities, to the editorial pages, to city politicians, New Orleans strip clubs were blamed for human trafficking, leading to abusive police raids – harming the dancers they claimed they were protecting, and pushing the dancers to fight back.

In the ‘fentanyl’ bust at a ‘narcotics house,’ no opioids were seized at all.

We were both speeding on the highway’s one-lane exit ramp, but apparently I wasn’t going fast enough. The driver behind me was furious. He rode my bumper, revved his engine impatiently and, when the road widened, raced next to me to roll down his window and glare. Then he sped in front of me, only […]

On May 23, 2013, Khari Illidge, a 25-year-old Black man in Lee County, Alabama, was face down and hogtied, with a 385-pound police officer kneeling on his back, when he suddenly went limp and a mixture of white froth and blood seeped from his mouth. Sheriff’s deputies had confronted Illidge while he was running in […]

M. thought she was doing the right thing. She had become dependent on opioids, but when she learned she was pregnant, she immediately tried to enroll in a medication assisted treatment (MAT) program. MAT is the standard of care for treating people with opioid use disorder — especially pregnant women, as quitting opioids too suddenly […]

On December 28, 2017, 28-year-old Andrew Finch of Wichita, Kansas, opened his front door to a horde of shouting police officers. Ten seconds later, he was fatally shot in the head — yet the officer who pulled the trigger isn’t the one being charged with his death. The events of that tragic late December day were set […]

Los Angeles Police Department analysts are each tasked with maintaining “a minimum” of a dozen ongoing surveillance targets for future targeting, using Palantir software and an updated “probable offender” formula, according to October 2017 documents, obtained through a public records request lawsuit by the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and given exclusively to The Appeal. These […]

These days, former Sheriff Jim Pendergraph calls himself an “Old School Conservative,” but not so long ago he identified as a Democrat. This is back in early 2006, when Pendergraph was like most sheriffs — an enormously powerful guy who managed to get around unnoticed. He was 35 years into his law enforcement career and 12 years […]