A police officer in Alabama proposed murdering a black resident and creating bogus evidence to suggest the killing was in self-defence, the Guardian has learned. Officer Troy Middlebrooks kept his job and continues to patrol Alexander City after authorities there paid the man $35,000 to avoid being publicly sued over the incident. Middlebrooks, a veteran of the US marines, said the man “needs a god damn bullet” and allegedly...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, facing sharp criticism over police shootings of civilians, announced reforms on Friday to address how police and other emergency workers respond to the mentally ill, including new crisis training for officers.

A police department in Vietnam is offering cash for tip-offs that lead to crimes being solved or criminals apprehended. Officials in District 12 of Ho Chi Minh City - the country's largest city - say they want to make local residents more engaged in "fighting crime and securing the community", the Tuoi Tre News website reports.

The FBI is reviewing its contacts with Orlando shooter Omar Mateen, but so far hasn't found any lapse in its dealings with him, Director James Comey said Monday. "We will continue to look forward in this investigation and backward," Comey said in a nationally televised statement in Washington. "We will leave no stone unturned and we will work all day and all night to understand the path to that terrible night."

Hawaii's governor signed a bill making it the first state to place its residents who own firearms in a federal criminal record database and monitor them for possible wrongdoing anywhere in the country, his office said. The move by gun control proponents in the liberal state represents an effort to institute some limits on firearms in the face of a bitter national debate over guns that this week saw Democratic lawmakers stage a sit-in at the U.S. House of Representatives.

A third person has been arrested after the country's largest ever cocaine haul was found inside a diamante horse sculpture. A Mexican man was arrested in Christchurch, and police say further arrests are likely. A 44-year-old Mexican National and a 56-year-old US national were arrested at Auckland International Airport last night. Customs Officers first had suspicions in May of a 400kg diamante-encrusted horse, which had been freighted into the country from Mexico.

In May, we told you of a lawsuit involving a Rohnert Park, California, cop who looked ready to fire his handgun at a man who was filming him. Last year's standoff happened right outside the resident's house. Claiming civil rights violations, the alleged victim sued (PDF) the officer and police department that is located about an hour north of San Francisco. The police department and officer, David Rodriguez, have now responded to the lawsuit. They essentially say it was resident Don McComas' fault from the get go and that McComas' own actions outside his house prompted the officer to draw his weapon on the Rohnert Park man.

Jon O. Newman is a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The acquittal Thursday of another Baltimore police officer charged in the death of Freddie Gray, like the acquittal 25 years ago of the Los Angeles officers who beat Rodney King, reveals the inadequacy of the criminal-law remedy. Suing the police for money under a strengthened federal civil rights law would be a better response to police misconduct.

The explosive that severely injured a man in New York's Central Park today was likely "an experiment with fireworks or explosives," but did not seem like a device made deliberately to hurt anyone, officials said. It was still not clear exactly what the explosive was, but police said they did not believe it was connected to terrorism. Mark Torre, commanding officer of the NYPD bomb squad, added that investigators are leaning toward considering this the work of an explosive "hobbyist," an amateur or someone who knows chemistry.

When police found Andrew Sadek selling $80 worth of pot, they pressured him into being a confidential informant and told him to go after ‘harder drugs.’ Then he turned up dead. On Andrew Sadek’s 20th birthday, North Dakota police made him an offer: moonlight as a confidential informant and avoid rotting in prison. It was November 2013, and Sadek had never been in trouble before. Months earlier, he’d sold a small amount of pot—$20 and $60 worth—to a narc at his school, the North Dakota State College of Science.

A disturbing video, purportedly shot by a black couple driving in the St. Paul suburb of Falcon Heights, was posted to Facebook Wednesday night. If the events depicted in the video are accurate, they are among the most upsetting depictions of police violence against civilians captured to date.

Just days after the fatal shooting of a black man by Baton Rouge police prompted international outrage and a Justice Department investigation, the Baton Rouge city government's servers have been "hacked" and 50,000 city police records leaked online including names, addresses, emails, and phone numbers. A hacker named @0x2Taylor claimed responsibility for accessing the database on Thursday afternoon. It is unclear whether Taylor accessed the data himself or was given it by a third-party and took credit.

Over 90 percent of residents in the Bahamas are black, and Monday is a national holiday, when some travel north from the archipelago to vacation in the United States. But following deadly police shootings this week of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota — and an ambush of white officers in Texas — the island nation on Friday advised its residents to be extra careful if they choose to do travel here.

A suburban St. Louis police officer was in critical condition late Friday after he was shot in the neck in what investigators described as an "ambush" following a traffic stop. Ballwin Police Chief Kevin Scott said the unidentified officer was walking to his car after the initial conversation with the motorist he stopped for speeding Friday morning when that driver "advanced quickly" on him from behind, firing at least three shots. The officer "had no chance at all" to pull his handgun and "was completely helpless," Scott said, noting the encounter was recorded by the police car's dashcam.

Speaking in Poland on Saturday, Obama addressed the recent events in Dallas, as well as the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. "This has been a tough week. First and foremost for the families [of] who'd been killed. But also for the entire American family," he said. But "as painful as this week has been, I firmly believe that America is not as divided as some have suggested," he added.

After new video has surfaced showing an off-duty NYPD officer gunning down another man, experts say the officer will likely be fired.

Good job, Zuck. It’s been a long, tragic week. On Tuesday, an officer shot and killed Alton Sterling in Louisiana while he was being held down. Then on Wednesday, Facebook Live captured the death of Philando Castile in Minnesota, who was shot by police during a traffic stop. During a peaceful protest in Dallas on Thursday over those killings, a sniper killed multiple police officers and injured others. To end the week, on Friday, Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters put up a giant sign declaring that “Black Lives Matter” and held a moment of silence for the people who had died.

Yale Law School Professor Stephen Carter – a prominent left of center legal scholar – has an excellent column highlighting an important lesson of the recent tragic death of Eric Garner at the hands of a New York City police officer. Unlike the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Missouri, where there was conflicting witness testimony, this killing was pretty obviously indefensible, and has been condemned by observers across the political spectrum. But, as Carter emphasizes, incidents like this are also a predictable consequence of the overextension of the regulatory state...

A classmate of 43 college students who disappeared in 2014 had been tortured before his body was found the day after the others went missing, Mexico's National Human Rights Commission said Monday. A new autopsy determined 22-year-old Julio Cesar Mondragon suffered 64 fractures in 40 bones, mostly in his skull, face and spine, said Jose Trinidad Larrieta, who has led the commission's investigation in the case. But Larrieta added that Mondragon's face was not skinned by his captors as some people had alleged, saying animals were responsible. The student died prior to that of brain injuries, he said.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, the Democratic challenger for governor, said Tuesday that the state’s new law excluding police camera recordings from the public record goes too far. The law puts North Carolina among about a half dozen states that specifically exclude body and dash cam recordings from open records laws. Republican Gov. Pat McCrory signed it Monday. It allows a person shown in a video to ask police to view the recording, it but not copy it.