Sheriff

ACLU Discrimination Class-Action Suit Against County Jail Wades Forward

Parties in a class-action lawsuit alleging discrimination against gay, bisexual and transgender (GBT) inmates at West Valley Detention Center appear open to resolving the case independently or through formal mediation, yet first must wrap up a weighty discovery effort. The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California, along with a Los Angeles-based law firm, filed the …


Lawsuit Uncovers Hocking County Deputies’ Racist Remarks

A public feud between Hocking County officials has exposed what the sheriff acknowledges were two of his on-duty deputies making racist comments on recordings uncovered in a federal lawsuit. Hocking County sheriff’s deputies Patrick Allison and Edwin Downs, while on duty and in the office, “joked” about burning crosses and building portable crosses to make cross-burning less work. In two …


Lawsuit Alleges Bradley County Sheriff Is Violating 1st Amendment

An area resident and American Atheists have filed a lawsuit alleging that Bradley County Sheriff Eric Watson is violating the First Amendment by proselytizing and censoring on the Bradley County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page. Officials filed the suit Monday in federal District Court in Eastern Tennessee in an effort to “stop the sheriff’s policy of censoring comments that are negative or at …


Postcard-Only Rule for Inmate Mail Spurs Lawsuit in Kansas

A Kansas sheriff’s jail policy allowing inmates to receive and send only postcards through the mail violates the free speech and due process rights of prisoners and their families, civil rights advocates said in a lawsuit filed Thursday. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Social Justice Law Collective are seeking a court order to end the practice. Their lawsuit, which seeks …


Two Panhandlers Are Suing One of the US’s Largest Sheriff’s Departments

syndication.ap.orgKim Pindak stands outside Chicago’s federal courthouse after the first day of testimony in a civil lawsuit involving him and and other panhandlers Monday, Jan. 25, 2016, in Chicago. A federal civil trial pitting two panhandlers against one of the nation’s largest sheriff’s departments got underway Monday, in a case stemming from a lawsuit that alleges the men were improperly …


Santa Clara Co. Settles With Family of Roku Engineer Fatally Shot by Deputy in 2013

Click photo to enlarge Brandon Marshall, one of the named plaintiffs in a case against the hiring policies of Silicon Valley companies, died after being shot by sheriff’s deputies in Saratoga on Dec. 10, 2013. SARATOGA — Santa Clara County has reached a $2 million settlement with the family of a despondent Sunnyvale man who was shot and killed by a sheriff’s deputy outside Roku headquarters in …