After years of Capitol Hill talk about repealing laws that require mandatory minimum prison sentences, the fatal shooting of five policemen in Dallas has inspired consideration of creating new federal crimes that would force judges to impose stiff sanctions. The Back the Blue Act, offered Wednesday by Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, would make killing a federal judge, federal law enforcement officer or a "federally funded public safety officer" punishable by a minimum of 30 years in prison.

Renowned astrophysicist recounts “a dozen” incidents with police. Neil deGrasse Tyson may be one of the most celebrated scientists of our time, but that doesn’t make him immune to racial profiling. On Tuesday, Tyson posted an excerpt from his 2004 book “The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist” on Facebook, in which he and several colleagues at a 1991 National Society of Black Physicists conference recounted times they had been detained by police without reason.

As more police forces adopt body cameras as a way to prevent abuse of power and lawsuits, one company says they'll be adding new technologies in the future to make the cameras even more valuable in the field. Axon is one of the leading providers of body cams to police forces. They say that they'll be rolling out models with livestreaming capabilities and cloud storage services next year, and that in the future they expect to have facial recognition capabilities within the technology. With several high profile, fatal police shootings currently in the news, more access to footage recorded by police body cams is increasingly a demand of...

Muflahi is a Muslim, born in Yemen and raised in the Detroit area. In his early 20s in 2010, he went to Baton Rouge to open a business, the Triple S Food Mart. He knew the Sterling family — they were customers. He says Alton Sterling was a regular. "He had a big heart, he always gave back to the community, always tried to help anybody that was short on some things that they wanted to buy," the store owner recalls. "He would walk in then and pay the rest. He was a very friendly guy." Muflahi used his cellphone to record what would become known as...

A Phenix City Taco Bell employee has been fired for allegedly refusing service to two Lee County Sheriff's deputies, the chain's corporate spokesperson said. The termination comes after an east Alabama woman, whose husband is a Lee County Sheriff’s deputy, says he and another deputy were allegedly refused service by a restaurant’s employee. Tammy Bush Mayo posted to Facebook on Saturday that her husband and a colleague, both dressed in their uniforms, were treated rudely at the Taco Bell located at 2059 Hwy. 280 in Phenix City on July 16.

After four days of testimony and essentially the same evidence as previous trials, Lieutenant Brian Rice was found not guilty on all charges in the death of Freddie Gray on Monday morning. Rice is the highest ranked officer charged in the death of Gray, a 25-year-old African American man who died from a fatal neck injury while in police custody. Judge Barry Williams presided over the trial. Rice was charged with manslaughter, reckless endangerment, and misconduct in office. An assault charge was thrown out by Judge Williams halfway through the trial due to insufficient evidence.

Could police officers someday identify criminals just by looking at them? That's the vision being touted by Taser International, which holds a monopoly on "conducted electrical weapons" for law enforcement and is aiming to build one for police body cameras, according to a Businessweek cover story. In the story, Lieutenant Dan Zehnder of the Las Vegas Police Department imagined himself patrolling the Las Vegas Strip with his Axon model Taser body camera streaming back to headquarters.

Authorities in New Hampshire said that they had arrested two state troopers and charged them with assault for their actions during a violent arrest captured on video earlier this year. The arrest occurred after a long police chase that began in Massachusetts and ended in New Hampshire, after which at least two officers were seen on the video repeatedly punching the driver who had led the pursuit.

A Pennsylvania county's Police Officer of the Year has been charged with assaulting his wife. The York Dispatch (http://bit.ly/2agcdiv ) reports 34-year-old Bryn Lindenmuth was charged with simple assault, false imprisonment and harassment. Authorities say he ripped off some of his wife's clothes, scratched her and refused to let her leave her home after she returned from a cookout Saturday night.

The man who drove a truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, killing 84 people and injuring hundreds more, had help planning the attack, the Paris prosecutor, François Molins, has revealed. Evidence from mobile phones and computer records suggested that Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was not a recently radicalised “lone wolf”, as previously thought, but had several accomplices and had planned his attack for up to a year.

Germany's federal criminal police have 410 leads on possible terrorists among refugees here, a local newspaper reported on Monday. The Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung newspaper said that compared with 369 leads in mid-May since the beginning of the migrant crisis last year. Investigations have been launched in 60 cases, the newspaper said. It cited federal BKA police as saying they did not currently have any concrete indications of attack plans. "In view of continuing migration to Germany we must assume that there could be active and former members, supporters and sympathizers of terrorist organizations...

Michael Jordan, widely considered the greatest basketball player in NBA history and the lone African-American majority owner of a franchise, has decided to speak out on the country’s growing racial and social unrest. “As a proud American, a father who lost his own dad in a senseless act of violence, and a black man, I have been deeply troubled by the deaths of African-Americans at the hands of law enforcement and angered by the cowardly and hateful targeting and killing of police officers...

Daniel Rushing treats himself to a Krispy Kreme doughnut every other Wednesday. He used to eat them in his car. Not anymore. Not since a pair of Orlando police officers pulled him over, spotted four tiny flakes of glaze on his floorboard and arrested him, saying they were pieces of crystal methamphetamine. The officers did two roadside drug tests and both came back positive for the illegal substance, according to his arrest report.

Toronto police Const. James Forcillo has been sentenced to six years in prison for the attempted murder of Sammy Yatim, the 18-year-old shot dead aboard a streetcar in July 2013.

A man was shot multiple times by state police after troopers were directed to respond to an incorrect address for a 911 hang-up call late Friday night, authorities said. The Attorney General's Shooting Response Team is investigating the incident in Cumberland County which left a 76-year-old man critically injured. In a statement released Saturday, authorities said police dispatchers received a 911 call from a cell phone shortly before 11:30 p.m. on Friday, but the caller hung up before contact was made.

Less than a week before the 2016 Rio Olympics are set to start, the Brazil Ministry of Justice terminated its contract with a private firm that was supposed to provide security for the games. It’s not hard to see why the Ministry of Justice reacted so harshly. With only a few days left until the first venues are set to open, Artel admitted that they have only hired 500 security personnel.

In the decade between 2005 and 2015, 199 people died in the custody of the Harris County Sheriff's Office —and of those who died in the county jail, about 85 percent had not yet been convicted of a crime. That's according to a new database developed by University of Texas postdoctoral fellow Amanda Woog, documenting nearly 7,000 in-custody deaths in Texas. Using all reports that local law enforcement and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice are required to send to the state attorney general whenever a prisoner dies...

Videos from the fatal shooting of teenager Paul O'Neal by Chicago police show officers firing down a street as O'Neal sped away from them in a reportedly stolen car and, moments later, officers handcuffing O'Neal as he lay mortally wounded behind a South Shore home.

When Philando Castile was pulled over in July, it was at least his 46th traffic stop — almost all related to fairly minor traffic violations. And it would be his last. By the end of the stop — reportedly in part over a broken taillight — a police officer, apparently scared that Castile was grabbing for a gun, shot and killed the 32-year-old. Castile’s girlfriend then live-streamed the immediate aftermath on Facebook, calmly retelling the story of how a minor traffic stop for a low-level offense turned into a death sentence. Castile’s story isn’t unique.

After a watchdog blog repeatedly linked him and other local officials to corruption and fraud, the Sheriff of Terrebone Parish in Louisiana on Tuesday sent six deputies to raid a police officer’s home to seize computers and other electronic devices. Sheriff Jerry Larpenter’s deputies submitted affidavits alleging criminal defamation against the anonymous author of the ExposeDAT blog, and obtained search warrants to seize evidence in the officer’s house and from Facebook.