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An Allen Park police officer is recovering Monday morning after getting hit by a car on Sunday.

The officer closed down the ramp from easy I-94 ramp to northbound Southfield in Allen Park because of an accident.

An 17-year-old Belleville man was text messaging while driving and didn’t notice the police cruiser blocking traffic, police said.

The officer is in stable condition.

The driver was not injured, but police said he will face criminal charges.

Copyright 2006 by ClickOnDetroit.com

Next week marks the one-year anniversary of a controversial police shooting involving a 15-year-old.

Brandon McCloud died when police shot him in the bedroom of his home last September.

Now, all sides in the case are filing lawsuits. The two officers involved have filed a lawsuit against the city of Cleveland, and McCloud’s family is expected to file a suit as well, despite a judge’s ruling that the shooting was justifiable, reported NewsChannel5’s Joe Pagonakis.

Family friend Abdul Rashad said that McCloud should still be here and that his death was murder.

The ninth-grader was shot and killed by police on Sept. 1 2005. The officers went to McCloud’s home with a search warrant looking for stolen merchandise.

Officers said that when they entered McCloud’s bedroom, the teen lunged at them with a steak knife, and that’s when they opened fire.

Several months later, the shooting was ruled justifiable, but not in the minds of family and friends who will file a lawsuit against the police department and the officers involved on Thursday.

They contend that McCloud was on his knees trying to get out of bed when he was shot. Police said that McCloud was on his feet, coming toward them.

The officers involved are suing the city for not supporting them during the investigation.

A fired police officer was sentenced Monday to 4 1/2 years in prison for making a bomb threat at a police station and for violating bail.

Jon Bartlett, 34, was convicted of the bomb threat and bail jumping this month. He was accused of making the threat to his former station in December 2005.

“I find you are a ticking time bomb about to explode at any minute,” Circuit Judge David Hansher told Bartlett, who also was fined $10,000.

Bartlett was charged with bail jumping because at the time he had been out on bail on charges in a case that that inflamed racial tensions in the city: the beating of a biracial man at a house party in October 2004.

Bartlett and two other white police officers who were accused of beating Frank Jude Jr. have been fired. Bartlett still faces a state battery charge in that case, and federal officials are considering additional charges, but a state jury in April acquitted the three defendants of all other counts.

Bartlett also faces federal charges for trying to buy two guns, prohibited for anyone charged with a felony.

A standoff that lasted almost three hours at a residence in Lauderdale County ended peacefully last night and resulted in the arrest of an off-duty college police officer.

54-year-old Thomas McFarland, a policemen with the University of North Alabama, was accused of holding his wife hostage for a short time. She managed to escape the residence unharmed.

Sheriff Ronnie Willis said McFarland was armed, but surrendered without incident. He was charged with menacing and additional charges could be added.

Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press

Punsters might say the West Duluth police substation is going to pot.

A dozen marijuana plants, a few as tall as six inches, were found growing in a planter near the substation’s front door. City Gardener Tom Kasper estimated they had been growing for about three weeks.

“The only thing I can say is somebody has a sense of humor,” said neighborhood supervising police Lt. John Beyer.

Beyer noted that he, his police officers and the public use the back door entrance to the police station. The front door is just off a busy street and is usually locked.

Beyer said the plants would be placed in a paper bag and destroyed with other confiscated drugs.

Tuesday marked one month since a man accused of killing a police officer broke free from a local jail — and officials admitted there are no new leads in the case.

John Parsons, who escaped from the Ross County Jail on July 29, was scheduled to go on trial in October in connection with the slaying of Larry Cox. Cox was shot and killed in April 2005.

Authorities said Parsons escaped with a rope made from toilet paper and bed sheets. Officials said Parsons hid them in a hole he dug out of a section of concrete in his jail cell. Parsons then replaced the block of concrete and used toothpaste to replace the mortar.

Authorities said Parsons scaled down an outside recreation area wall and crawled underneath razor wire. He then jumped onto a lower-level roof and onto an inmate transportation garage before running away, officials said.

Sheriff’s deputies said they thought Parsons then stole a bicycle to make his getaway. Officials said Parsons was spotted in Ross County several times in the days following the escape but was always able to elude authorities.

Police said Parsons killed Cox on April 21, 2005. Cox, 44, was shot in the neck during a police pursuit of a man who was suspected of robbing a gas station and stealing a car.

Parsons was later indicted on four counts of aggravated murder; one count each of aggravated robbery, tampering with evidence and having a weapon while under disability; and two counts of grand theft.

Parsons is 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighs 190 pounds and has brown hair and brown eyes. He has several tattoos, including a tattoo of two angels facing each other on the back of his neck.

Parsons’ mother, Debra Flesher, was arrested and charged with obstructing justice for allegedly helping her son in the escape. Investigators said they found receipts for travelers checks and phone cards inside Flesher’s home. They also said Flesher, 54, left camping supplies on the back porch for her son.

Screaming an anatomically impossible obscene suggestion at a police officer is against the law, a Manhattan judge has decided.

The quirky ruling, made public yesterday, concerns the case of Brooklynite Ramon Morena, who is charged with creating a public disturbance by shouting “Go f - - - yourself” at a cop in the Theater District in March.

Morena’s lawyer had tried to convince the judge that civilians enjoy a First Amendment right to criticize and verbally challenge police officers. The charges, he argued, should therefore be thrown out of court.

But Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Richard Weinberg didn’t buy it. If you’re disorderly, you’re disorderly, the judge wrote - and there is no “police officer exemption” to the rule.

Morena now faces up to 15 days jail if found guilty of disorderly conduct.

“He’s still maintaining that whatever conduct they’re going to allege does not rise to the charge - and there was no public disturbance,” his lawyer, David Bruce Rankin, said.

According to the summons against him, Morena was standing on the northeast corner of West 45th Street and Eighth Avenue at 11:21 on a Friday night, arguing with an unidentified woman.

When the police officer approached, Morena allegedly screamed, “Go f - - - yourself. F - - - you, cop,” the summons said.

Morena was issued a summons on the spot for disorderly conduct, defined by law as conduct that causes - or creates a risk of - public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm. Morena’s screaming at the cop annoyed or alarmed the general public, the summons charges.

But any alleged screaming would be merely “a private annoyance” limited to the cop, the defense lawyer argued - and as such should have rolled off the officer’s back.

The judge countered, “To adopt defendant’s arguments would be to effectively carve out a police-officer exception from the disorderly conduct statute and to condone the heaping of verbal abuse upon a police officer regardless of the circumstances. This the court will not do.”

The case goes back before the judge on Sept. 5.

BALTIMORE
A man who said he was left a quadriplegic in a brutal arrest has been awarded $44 million by a Baltimore jury. Albert Mosley, 55, claimed Baltimore police Officer Bryan Kershaw slammed him into a wall while he was handcuffed in a holding cell in June 2003. Mosley had been arrested on a probation violation. Mosley now uses a wheelchair and lives at a private medical facility

City Solicitor Ralph Tyler said the city there are some post-trial legal issues to be raised, but said the city hasn’t decided if it will appeal.

An Easton man who claims a part-time Wilson Borough police officer beat him at police headquarters in 2003 was awarded $950,000 in an out-of-court settlement, his attorney said Wednesday.

In addition to the cash, the settlement calls for officer Gurshinder Martharu to be barred from working for the police force. It also requires the borough solicitor to spend at least 50 hours reviewing the department’s rules and regulations “to avoid future incidents,” attorney John Karoly Jr. said.

Borough Manager Karen Lohrman declined to comment on the settlement, but said it will be discussed at Monday night’s council meeting.

Karoly said his client, Brian Johnson, still has lingering effects from the beating, including chronic headaches, a diminished sense of taste and smell and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Karoly said Johnson of the 200 block of West Wilkes-Barre Street was satisfied with the settlement to the extent that the borough would not have been able to afford a larger amount due to its insurance policy.

The federal civil rights lawsuit was filed in November in Philadelphia. It also named officer James Siegfried, Chief Richard Nace and the borough as defendants. Siegfried witnessed the assault, the suit says.

According to the lawsuit, Johnson went to police headquarters on Aug. 23, 2003, with his sister, Holly, to pick up his girlfriend, Kendyll Mimlitch, who had gone to the station to give a statement about an assault that occurred earlier in the day.

As they were leaving the station, Martharu prevented Mimlitch from leaving, telling the Johnsons that she was a minor and could only be released to her father, the suit says. Brian Johnson told Martharu he had permission from the father to leave with Mimlitch but the officer refused to release her.

Johnson then left the station to call the girl’s father. As he walked across the parking lot he was struck in the back of the head and knee by Martharu causing him to fall down, the suit says. Martharu then handcuffed Johnson and dragged him across the parking lot and brought him back inside the station.

The suit says Martharu punched Johnson several times in the face and kicked him while he was still handcuffed.

A high-ranking sheriff’s officer apologized Wednesday for insensitive comments he and other officers made about demonstrators after a free speech summit in 2003 in Miami.

The comments wound up in a police-training video produced a day later. The video shows Maj. John Brooks and other officers praising each other for shooting protesters with rubber bullets.

“Looking back at the tape, in hindsight, I shouldn’t have said those things,” Brooks said in a report published Wednesday night on The Miami Herald’s Web site.

Broward County Sheriff’s officials said no one would face disciplinary action in connection with the training video.

A civilian investigative panel last week concluded that police indiscriminately used stun guns, tear gas and other weapons and unlawfully arrested and searched protesters during massive demonstrations at the 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas.

One protester, Elizabeth Ritter, contends she was unjustifiably shot with rubber bullets while she stood in front of police in riot gear. A video recorded the day of the protests shows Ritter cowering under a sign while being pelted with bullets. One bullet pierced the sign and struck her in the head.

The training tape shows officers joking about the shots fired at Ritter.

Brooks joined the sheriff’s office in 2000, less than a month after quitting his job as a Miami police assistant chief amid an uproar over his ride-along with federal agents during the armed raid to seize Elian Gonzalez. Elected officials had warned they did not want Miami police involved.