Police Brutality

The day after the family of an inmate beaten to death in Orange County Jail received a $600,000 settlement, an attorney for one of the men accused in the killing said he is seeking the personnel files of the deputies on duty at the time. John Chamberlain, a 41-year-old computer technician from Mission Viejo, was awaiting trial on charges that he possessed child pornography. Instead, he was killed by other inmates in 2006 in the first slaying in an Orange County jail in two decades.

On the steps of the courthouse, a man handed out buttons emblazoned with a bullet wound and a number. Protesters waved placards carrying the same number and counted in unison until they reached the figure at the heart of this case: 50. That is how many bullets undercover police officers fired at Sean Bell, killing the unarmed 23-year-old after his bachelor party at a Queens nightclub in November 2006. Two of the officers involved in the shooting went on trial for manslaughter Monday.

As a young man in South Los Angeles, Winston Hayes got to know the Compton courthouse well, getting hauled before judges more than a dozen times to answer charges of arson, assault and other crimes. On Friday, Hayes, 46, was back in court, but this time he walked out $1,326,468.60 richer after a civil court jury decided that Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies used excessive force on him three years ago.

The Orange County district attorney's office has opened an investigation into a violent struggle between sheriff's deputies and an inmate who sustained life-threatening injuries, officials said Tuesday. The action is the latest setback to the department as it struggles to recover from a series of allegations involving the treatment of inmates.

They lied, they changed their stories and they compared notes even after being ordered not to by a special Orange County grand jury investigating a deadly beating at Theo Lacy Jail, the testimony shows. During 45 days of grand jury prodding, members of the Sheriff's Department repeatedly hindered the probe, according to thousands of pages of transcripts made public last week. Then-Sheriff Michael S.

Two members of a Bell Gardens family who said police beat them at a Halloween costume party in 2005 have been awarded a $4.5-million civil rights judgment, their attorneys said Monday.

As many as 1,000 police officers are poised for action if community unrest follows Friday's verdict in the trial of three detectives charged in a high-profile shooting death, authorities said Wednesday. The New York Police Department has organized crowd-control training for hundreds of officers and met with borough supervisors as part of the preparations.

A former Maywood police officer was convicted Wednesday of assaulting a handcuffed suspect and filing a false police report about the incident afterward. Prosecutors argued in a seven-day jury trial that Michael Joseph Singleton rammed the prisoner's head against a wall in retaliation for a stream of insults and behavior that included spitting at the officer. The victim, Jose Bernal, now 35, was knocked unconscious, his nose was broken and he suffered temporary paralysis to one side of his face.

At 1:28 p.m. on Jan. 17, Baron "Scooter" Pikes was a healthy 21-year-old. By 2:07 p.m., he was dead. What happened in the 39 minutes in between -- during which Pikes was handcuffed by police and shocked nine times with a Taser while reportedly pleading for mercy -- is spawning suspicions of a political cover-up in this lumber town infamous for backroom dealings. Racial tensions also are mounting; Pikes was black and the officer involved is white.

Seeking to defuse growing racial tensions in the small Louisiana town of Winnfield, the district attorney announced Monday that he would seek an indictment against a white officer in the death of a black man who was shocked nine times with a Taser while handcuffed. Winn Parish Dist. Atty. Chris Nevils said he would convene a grand jury Aug.