The Orange County Register says the settlement was announced at Tuesday's City Council meeting. It was approved on a 5-0 vote.

In exchange, Cathy Thomas agreed to not pursue any further claims or lawsuits seeking damages for the death of her 37-year-old son, Kelly.

The deal does not involve her ex-husband, Ron Thomas.

A judge earlier this month ordered two officers to stand trial on criminal charges in the case. Their next court appearance is scheduled for May 22.

The incident last July also prompted an effort to remove three Fullerton councilmembers. They face a recall on next month's ballot.

Copyright 2012 Associated Press

EXTRACTION: Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy says officers will attempt to extract individual lawbreakers from crowds to keep problems from escalating. He says the department does not want to disperse crowds.

CUT TEAMS: These teams will be dispatched to separate protesters who have chained themselves to each other in so-called "sleeping dragon" maneuvers to block vehicle or pedestrian traffic.

SOUND CANNONS: Long-range acoustical devices (LRADs) emit ear-piercing noise to paralyze or disperse crowds. McCarthy says he intends to use the devices only to get protesters' attention so police can better communicate with them.

TEAR GAS/PEPPER SPRAY: McCarthy has publicly raised doubts about the effectiveness of tear gas as a crowd control tool. Each officer will be equipped with pepper spray, but McCarthy says it should be used only to thwart assaults on officers.

CORRALING: Police sometimes surround a crowd so no one can move, a method known as "kettling." Chicago officers detained hundreds of people this way during an Iraq war protest in 2003 and recently paid more than $6 million to settle resulting lawsuits.

BICYCLES: Officers use their bikes for mobility but also to create a barrier to crowd movements. Chicago police used this tactic during a recent May Day march.

WARNINGS: During an Occupy protest last year, police methodically issued warnings to individuals and groups of protesters before making arrests. McCarthy says that method again will be used, if possible.

SHIFTS: Police will rotate officers off the front lines to guard against frayed nerves and fatigue that might contribute to confrontations with protesters.

Copyright 2012 Associated Press

The suspect, identified as Dominique Campbell, 41, was pronounced dead at a hospital, The Washington Post reported. The unidentified officer is being treated for non-life threatening injuries resulting from the shootout.

The exchange of gunfire happened as officers sought a suspect who was reported to have shot a man in the leg about 30 minutes earlier, D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said.

As an officer approached an armed man who matched the description of that suspect, the man opened fire, grazing the officer in the leg, Lanier said.

The man was hit when the officer returned fire, and a witness reported hearing five or six shots and seeing someone lying on the ground near an apartment complex.

Police are still investigating whether the two shooting incidents were related. Shell casings from a weapon that was not a duty firearm, as well as a gun, were recovered at the scene.

The bill would have made Colorado the third state in the nation with a blood-level limit for marijuana, much as the nation has a blood-alcohol limit of .08.

Currently, drugged-driving convictions depend on officer observations.

The Colorado Senate fell a single vote short on the bill setting a drivers' blood standard for THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana. The measure failed on a 17-17 tie, one vote short of the number needed to advance it.

Earlier Tuesday, the state House signed off again on the bill that would limit drivers to 5 nanograms of THC per milliliter of blood. Sponsors talked about Colorado's rising arrest rates for people driving under the influence of drugs, as well as data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showing more drivers in fatal accidents test positive for marijuana.

"It is past time to get this done," said Republican Rep. Mark Waller, sponsor of the bill.

However, marijuana activists and some lawmakers from both parties argued that the blood standard is an unfair measure of driver impairment. They pointed out that more than 90 percent of Colorado's drugged-driving criminal cases already end in convictions, so they questioned whether the 5 nanogram limit would change behavior.

"I don't think it'll make our roads any safer," argued Democratic Sen. Pat Steadman of Denver.

Some Republicans opposed the bill, arguing that the measure considered Tuesday should have targeted more than just marijuana use.

Opponents tried to amend the bill to exempt state-certified medical marijuana patients from the limit. The amendment failed.

"Impaired is impaired, whether you have a (medical marijuana) card or don't have a card," argued Republican Sen. Steve King.

After the amendment failed, the entire bill collapsed. Its fate appeared to hinge on the absence Tuesday of a lone senator _ Republican Sen. Nancy Spence of the Denver suburb of Centennial.

Spence opposed the DUI measure last year, but changed course and gave the marijuana DUI a single-vote margin of victory in the Senate earlier this year. That bill didn't clear the House, though, as that chamber was embroiled in a last-minute standoff over civil unions for same-sex couples.

The pot bill came back to lawmakers in a special legislative session. However, Spence has been out of town all week and didn't make it to Denver for the vote. Her absence meant defeat for the bill.

While it's already illegal to drive while impaired by drugs, states have taken different approaches to the issue. More than a dozen states, including Arizona, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, and Rhode Island, have a zero-tolerance policy for driving with any presence of an illegal substance, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Minnesota has the same policy but exempts marijuana.

Nevada, which is among the 16 states that allow medical marijuana, and Ohio have a 2 nanogram THC limit for driving. Pennsylvania has a 5 nanogram limit, but that's a state Health Department guideline, which can be introduced in driving violation cases.

Voters in Washington state will consider a 5 nanogram THC driving limit this fall on a ballot measure about marijuana legalization. A legalization ballot measure pending in Colorado specifically leaves the question to lawmakers.

Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper added drugged driving to a list of measures he asked lawmakers to consider in the special legislative session expected to end Wednesday.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy has asked all states to adopt blood-limit, drugged driving laws and set a goal of reducing drugged driving in the United States 10 percent by the year 2015. But the White House doesn't tell states what nanogram limit to set for illegal drugs.

Law enforcement lobbyists in Colorado have vowed to keep trying to enact a pot DUI standard. Tom Raynes of the Colorado District Attorneys Council argues that even though medical marijuana is legal in Colorado, it's not dosed like prescription drugs and is easily abused.

"Folks don't know what they're taking," Raynes said. "It's like a doctor offering a bowl of drugs and saying, `Reach in, take what you think you need and go ahead and drive.' ... We've got to get a handle on this."

Copyright 2012 Associated Press

The DOJ presented its confidential settlement proposal to the city at the end of March, after finding that Seattle police regularly used illegal force, often for minor offenses. The DOJ threatened to sue unless the problems were fixed.

The AP reviewed a copy of the proposal Tuesday, which shows the DOJ wants the city to change policies, add training for officers and hire more sergeants to supervise patrol officers. The city must also agree to the appointment of an outside monitor, at city expense.

A Seattle Police analysis of the DOJ's proposal, also reviewed by the AP, takes issue with the cost of the reforms — $41 million, according to a preliminary estimate — as well as the four- to six-month timelines for many of them. It complains that the 1-to-6 ratio of sergeants to patrol officers that prosecutors are seeking, as opposed to the department's current ratio of 1-to-8, is not a standard found in most major city police agencies, and would take, conservatively, two to three years to accomplish.

"Plainly stated, the overwhelming majority of programs proposed by DOJ cannot be implemented in less than one to three years, if at all," the analysis reads. "These timelines can only be described as impossible and prompt serious questions about the analytical thoroughness and organizational experience of those who proposed them."

The DOJ's proposal calls for reaching the 1-to-6 ratio of sergeants to officers in six months, but appears to give some flexibility by saying that before that, the city and police department should evaluate the ratio to determine whether the suggestion is appropriate.

In the first year, the analysis said, officers would be recruited and trained to fill in for promoted sergeants. The sergeant exam must be announced a year in advance, according to civil service laws, and by city rules, the exams are given every other year. Any shortcut to the rules can result in appeals, and typically no more than 20 percent of those taking the exam are promoted.

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn is due to present his response to the DOJ's proposal this week, which he expects will be followed by "good-faith negotiations" between the city and DOJ. If no agreement is reached by the end of the month, the city expects to face a lawsuit from DOJ on June 1.

Last week, the DOJ sued tough-talking Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County, Ariz., over allegations that his department racially profiled Latinos. It was only the second time since the verdict in the Rodney King police brutality case and Los Angeles riots that the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against a law enforcement agency with which it was unable to reach an agreement.

McGinn first announced the cost estimate of $41 million on Monday, prompting the U.S. attorney's office in Seattle to describe the figure as inflated. The city is facing a budget hole of about $30 million.

"The budget numbers being projected by the city are simply wrong," Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Bates said in a written statement Monday. "The cost of any agreement will not be remotely close to the figure cited today. We are confident that once the city understands our proposed agreement, it will conclude that what we cannot afford is further delay."

The U.S. attorney's office declined to comment Tuesday.

The Justice Department launched its formal civil rights investigation early last year, following the fatal shooting of a homeless, Native American woodcarver and other incidents of force used against minority suspects.

Surveillance cameras and police-cruiser videos captured officers beating civilians, including stomping on a prone Latino man who was mistakenly thought to be a robbery suspect, and an officer kicking a non-resisting black youth in a convenience store.

In December, a DOJ report found that one out of every five times an officer used force, it was used unconstitutionally. The department failed to adequately review the use of force and lacked policies and training related to the use of force, it said.

McGinn has said he agrees with many of the DOJ's findings and has already pushed initiatives to address some of the issues raised. U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan has said those are encouraging, but too vague to satisfy the DOJ.

The mayor has expressed some heartburn over the appointment of an independent monitor to oversee the changes, saying it could hamstring officers in some situations — for example, during a public safety emergency, such as rioting that gripped the city's downtown on May 1. The mayor has suggested that he would not have been able to take certain actions, such as issuing an emergency order authorizing police to seize bats and long sticks from the protesters, without advance approval from the monitor.

The DOJ has disputed that — "Constitutional policing does not inhibit or hamstring the police," Durkan said — and McGinn announced Monday that he ultimately will agree to the appointment of a monitor.

"The monitor shall not, and is not intended to, replace or assume the role and duties of the city or Seattle Police Department, including the chief of police," the DOJ's proposal reads.

The DOJ's 100-page settlement proposal includes a wide array of changes.

– Officers must use "disengagement and de-escalation techniques" to calm agitated suspects or call in specialized units to reduce the need for force, and only use force proportional to resistance used by suspects;

– Officers shall not use any weapon to strike someone in the head unless deadly force is authorized;

– All uses of force, including pointing a gun at someone, must be reported;

– No force can be used against someone who merely talks back to an officer;

– New reporting requirements for investigative stops of civilians, including duration of stop and perceived race of person stopped, to collect data to ensure bias-free policing.

– An expansion of the police department's crisis intervention teams;

– Policies to protect whistleblowers, with the presumed punishment for retaliation being firing;

– An expansion of the city's police-review board, the Office of Professional Accountability, to include a review of whether the board should report to the mayor rather than the police department. The city maintains that many of the changes to OPA would require negotiations with the Seattle Police Officer's Guild; according to the Seattle Police analysis, the last time changes to the OPA were negotiated, it cost the city more than $24 million in pay raises for union members.

The DOJ's proposed settlement also calls for 40 hours of annual training for officers, sergeants and commanders on topics ranging from role-playing in proper use-of-force decision-making, use of weapons, de-escalation techniques, crisis intervention, anti-bias training and evaluating written reports. The police department believes adequate training covering all those topics would take far longer than 40 hours — perhaps 120 hours or more of training beyond the 40 hours officers already undergo every year.

That would require other officers to fill in, on overtime, for those receiving training, the department said.

The department is already operating at a bare-bones level with 520 patrol officers and average response times hovering at just under six minutes, the analysis said, and it would be "preposterous" to simply promote 54 officers to sergeant without replacing them, the analysis said. Copyright 2012 Associated Press

At agencies where line-of-duty deaths are a rarity and there’s no proven protocol in place for honoring a dead officer, the skill to do the right things may not match the will.

Sergeant Scott Barthelmass of the Overland (Mo.) PD can help.

A 17-year law enforcement veteran, Barthelmass heads up a Law Enforcement Funeral Assistance Team for the state of Missouri, one of a handful of such organizations active in the U.S. In the last four years, his group has helped plan and/or conduct 70 law enforcement funerals or memorials, ranging from those for retired officers who suffered fatal heart attacks to officers killed in car crashes or gunned down on-duty.

Even K-9 funerals qualify for the team’s assistance.

In a presentation for the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police and during an interview later with PoliceOne, he spoke about the special needs of these solemn occasions.

“The way a police funeral is handled is critical to helping an officer’s coworkers, surviving family, and community begin to heal,” he says. “Everyone needs to see how heroic the dead officer was by the way his or her death is commemorated. You want the family to think, ‘Wow! He did make a difference’,” Barthelmass explained.

“Yet many agencies, especially small or medium-size ones, are overwhelmed and unprepared when a death suddenly strikes. They’re well-intentioned, but they don’t have the manpower, the knowledge, or the resources necessary to organize and execute appropriate memorial procedures. Most times, there’s so much emotion going on and so many details that are important to cover it’s hard to figure out what to do on the fly.”

Across his career, Barthelmass himself has experienced the deaths of seven friends killed in action. “Among them, there was one really, really bad funeral,” he says. “The agency didn’t communicate at all with the officer’s family — just did what it wanted to do and ended up making some very unfortunate choices. There are still scars.”

In 2008, several LEOs were killed in one month in Missouri, and as their grieving agencies stumbled through the hectic aftermath, “it became obvious that many departments need help when these tragedies occur,” Barthelmass recalls.

A volunteer firefighter as well as a cop, he was aware that the fire community has a proficient, nationwide network of funeral assistance teams to assure that fallen members get awe-inspiring sendoffs. He decided to gather a group of fellow officers who would help him develop a team for the Show Me State that would mirror the fire paradigm for cops.

Today, that team, operating from the St. Louis area, consists of some 10 core members, with the capability of more than doubling its size as demand requires. All members are extensively trained in death notification, in dealing with trauma, and in funeral protocol. The group is chartered as a nonprofit organization, funded by donations. Its services are provided free of charge (a similar team has subsequently been organized in the Kansas City region).

“We only respond when requested by an agency,” Barthelmass explains. “Our job isn’t to take over in a high-profile manner. Our mission is to quietly assure that things run smoothly and that all bases are covered in a collaborative manner in a short time, like an unobtrusive, behind-the-scenes event-planner.

“We don’t want most people to even know we were there. We want people to think the department really did a good job of burying one of their own.”

Among areas where the team often makes a positive impact:

Family-agency Liaison — “It’s important that what the officer’s family wants and what the department has in mind mesh,” Barthelmass points out. He recalls one instance where an agency intended to post an honor guard holding rifles at the dead member’s casket. Considering that the officer had just been slain by someone with a gun, the family recoiled at this idea. “Too often, communication with the family gets lost in the shuffle and bitterness results,” Barthelmass notes.

Crowd Management — “More people often turn out for a police funeral than agencies anticipate,” Barthelmass says. “Officers are likely to show up from out of town and need accommodations or direction. Over 22,000 people turned out in Lakewood, Washington, when the four officers were killed there. That can swamp a small town without the right crowd control. Disruptive elements may appear too. Religious radicals who heckle military funerals sometimes target law enforcement funerals, as well. We can make sure the family is shielded from them without creating liability regarding free-speech rights.”

Body Escort — Usually the family and agency appreciate having the fallen officer’s body accompanied by a continual police presence from death through the burial. Barthelmass’s team can coach and equip honor guards to make that possible. In one exceptional case, an officer died in one state but was to be interred several states away. The funeral team arranged not only for a police escort for the long journey but had a squad car or fire engine visible from the highway at every overpass en route.

Street-coverage Logistics — Police services for the community need to be maintained during the funeral, but this can strain small agencies where members of the force, including dispatchers, want to attend or be involved in the memorial. “We can help recruit and coordinate substitutes to cover dispatch and patrol so there’s no disruption,” Barthelmass says.

Photographic Record — “We can provide a photographer to create a record of the event,” Barthelmass says. “The family often doesn’t remember what happened because of the stress and emotion they’re experiencing at the time. We can prepare a nice CD or DVD for them to view later and have as a keepsake.”

Memorable Touches — The variety of component pieces that Barthelmass’s team can provide seems limitless: Prayers and readings that are law enforcement-specific, flags from all military branches for veterans, albums in which people can write messages, help in tracking down a bag piper or a chaplain, guidance for helping survivors get the federal benefits they’re entitled to. “There can be a massive amount of planning that goes into a police funeral,” Barthelmass says. “We try to think of everything. We’ve never had a request we couldn’t fulfill.”

In Missouri and its surrounding states, the team can work with an agency in person. The team travels with a trailer stocked with an inventory to meet every contingency, from fuses for light bars to white gloves for pallbearers to toys for kids to arm bands and bunting to a sound system capable of broadcasting to huge crowds at a cemetery.

For departments beyond the team’s immediate geographic reach, Barthelmass can consult without charge by phone and email. “We’ve gotten so proficient at doing it, we can help anyone,” he says, “even if we’re not there in person.” And if you’d like to organize a funeral team in your area, he can send useful documents from a 150-page how-to manual he has compiled and guide you through the process.

“We can’t stop every line-of-duty death,” Barthelmass says. “We always hope another one won’t happen, but they do. It’s imperative that we lay fallen heroes to rest in the most honorable and dignified way possible.”

Scott Barthelmass can be reached at: sbarthelmass@yahoo.com or by cell phone at: (314) 565-2480. Access the team’s website for helpful information at: www.mopolicefuneral.org

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A report has found Texas State sent the wrong man to his death in 1989 after a case of mistaken identity.

It is reported that Carlos DeLuna looked very similar to the killer, had the same first name and was near the scene of the crime at the time. Mr DeLuna paid the ultimate price and was executed in place of someone else in Texas in 1989.

Even "all the relatives of both Carloses mistook them," and DeLuna was sentenced to death and executed based only on eyewitness accounts despite a range of signs he was not a guilty man.

Law professor James Liebman and five of his students at Columbia School of Law spent almost five years poring over details of a case that he says is "emblematic" of legal system failure.

DeLuna, 27, was put to death after "a very incomplete investigation. No question that the investigation is a failure," Mr Liebman said.

Following as hasty trial, Mr DeLuna was executed by lethal injection.

The report's authors found "numerous missteps, missed clues and missed opportunities that let authorities prosecute Carlos DeLuna for the crime of murder, despite evidence not only that he did not commit the crime but that another individual, Carlos Hernandez, did," the 780-page investigation found.

The report, entitled "Los Tocayos Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution," traces the facts surrounding the February 1983 murder of Wanda Lopez, a single mother who was stabbed in the gas station where she worked in a quiet corner of the Texas coastal city of Corpus Christi.

"Everything went wrong in this case," Mr Liebman said.

That night Lopez called police for help twice to protect her from an individual with a switchblade.

"They could have saved her, they said 'we made this arrest immediately' to overcome the embarrassment," Liebman said.

Forty minutes after the crime, Carlos DeLuna was arrested not far from the gas station.

He was identified by only one eyewitness who saw a Hispanic male running from the gas station. But DeLuna had just shaved and was wearing a white dress shirt — unlike the killer, who an eyewitness said had a moustache and was wearing a grey flannel shirt.

Even though witnesses accounts were contradictory — the killer was seen fleeing towards the north, while DeLuna was caught in the east — Carlos DeLuna was arrested.

"I didn't do it, but I know who did," DeLuna said at the time, saying that he saw Carlos Hernandez entering the service station.

DeLuna said he ran from police because he was on parole and had been drinking.

Hernandez, known for using a blade in his attacks, was later jailed for murdering a woman with the same knife. But in the trial, the lead prosecutor told the jury that Hernandez was nothing but a "phantom" of DeLuna's imagination.

Mr DeLuna's budget attorney even said that it was probable that Carlos Hernandez never existed.

However in 1986 a local newspaper published a photograph of Hernandez in an article on the DeLuna case.

Up to the day he died in prison of cirrhosis of the liver, Hernandez repeatedly admitted to murdering Wanda Lopez, Liebman said.

"Unfortunately, the flaws in the system that wrongfully convicted and executed DeLuna — faulty eyewitness testimony, shoddy legal representation and prosecutorial misconduct — continue to send innocent men to their death today," read a statement that accompanies the report.

Copyright 2012 RTE Commercial Enterprises Ltd

ROSELLE, Ill. — A 2-year-old pit bull named Chooch died last week when Roselle police officers used a stun gun to subdue the dog after he bit a family member. Now Chooch's owners — Haley Alexis Pekala, 20, and her boyfriend Micheal Kotas, 22 — say police used excessive force to get the roughly 50-pound pit bull under control.

"They overreacted," said Pekala, of Roselle. "The dog didn't have to be Tasered. They Tasered him so bad that I have pictures of where his skin turned black. They took it way out of control."

Roselle Deputy Police Chief Roman Tarchala said Monday the department is investigating to make sure officers followed proper policy and procedure when they responded about 9 p.m. May 8 to Kotas' house in Roselle to a report of a dog bite. Kotas' mother had been severely bitten in the leg while trying to break up a fight between Chooch and another pit bull at the home, Tarchala said.

The dogs started fighting when someone arrived at the house to deliver food. Kotas' mother was taken to Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Elk Grove Village, police said, where she needed surgery and remained hospitalized Monday.

On the night of the incident, paramedics were treating Kotas' mother in the front yard while Kotas' father was trying to calm Chooch down in the kitchen. When police officers entered the house, the dog started barking at them.

"When you are walking into a house, and you're in uniform and everything, what is the dog supposed to do?" Pekala said.

Tarchala said officers were aware that Chooch had bitten someone previously. Pekala said the earlier bite happened more than a year ago at her house when a family member attacked the dog in what was later determined to be an animal abuse situation.

"They (authorities) didn't take away the dog or anything," she said. "They did nothing last time."

Nevertheless, Tarchala said officers decided to take added precautions while trying to take the dog. When they saw Kotas' father struggling with Chooch, the officers stunned and noosed the dog "to get it under control," Tarchala said.

"In the process, the dog was unresponsive," he said. "They transported the dog to the animal hospital in Schaumburg. That's where the dog died."

How many times the stun gun was used is under investigation. But Kotas says he believes the device was used at least twice because of marks on the dog's body.

"Personally, I think they used excessive force," Kotas said. "I don't think the dog needed to be Tasered in the first place, considering the fact that my dad had him cornered in our kitchen and was calming him down."

Tarchala said officers can use a stun gun on a dog in certain situations.

"It's allowable to use on animals if they are vicious animals," he said.

But Kotas insists Chooch "never once made an attempt to go after" the police officers.

"Yes, he bit somebody," Kotas said. "But it wasn't acceptable to use excessive force to the point where he passed away."

Copyright 2012 Paddock Publications, Inc.

A Hawaii County prosecutor tells KHON that Dan DeJarnette pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder during his arraignment Tuesday.

The Los Angeles Times says DeJarnette was taken into custody Monday night at his home on the Big Island in connection with the slaying of his wife, Yu DeJarnette.

The former detective said at the time of his wife's 2006 death that he had awakened and found her lying on a lava embankment about 20 feet from the couple's home. She suffered severe head trauma and was pronounced dead at a hospital.

DeJarnette was booked at the time for investigation of murder and later released because of lack of evidence.

Copyright 2012 Associated Press

OREM, Utah — An 18-year-old Utah man was arrested on suspicion of burglary after police say he left his homework at the crime scene.

Police in Orem say they tracked a USB drive found at the burglarized home to Dallas Naljahih. They say the computer hard drive contained his homework and was in a backpack abandoned in the backyard.

A 75-year-old man and his wife reported their home had been burglarized early Saturday. The husband says he was woken up by a light in his office, and found a man who was looking through a desk.

The suspect punched the man and fled on foot.

Police say that Naljahih was found asleep at his house along with evidence connecting him with the burglary.

Copyright 2012 Associated Press