Al Sharpton used his Twitter account to blast New York cops for the “unfair treatment” of his daughter and ex-wife during a traffic dispute.

Kathy Jordan (Sharpton’s ex) and Dominique Sharpton were arrested in New York after the daughter allegedly ran through a stoplight and was pulled over by police.

Dominique called her mother who came to the scene. The pair were arrested after having a heated exchange with the officers, according to the New York Daily News. Both were issued tickets and released later that evening.

The death of a 15-year-old boy in Champagne, IL is causing community leaders to ask if the Champaign Police Department is targeting young black males.

Kiwane Carrington was killed Friday after an altercation with police after a neighbor called 911 to report a possible robbery. Carrington and another teen got into a scuffle with officers that resulted in Carrington being shot and killed. The name of the other boy involved is being withheld since he is in juvenile hall.

An officer involved in the incident was injured during the scuffle.

Debra Thomas, the owner of the home in question said Carrington has permission to be in the home. She took Carrington in after his mother died of cancer.

The Illinois State Police is investigating the incident.  View the family press conference here

The two Oakland, Calif., transit cops who were on the platform when Oscar Grant was killed have been awarded jobs training their fellow officers how to handle suspects. Marysol Domenici and Jon Woffinden, both of whom have been on leave and under investigation for their roles in the shooting, are newly appointed defensive tactical instructors for the Bay Area Transit Authority. In short, they have been given responsibility to teach the very issue they are being investigated for – apprehending suspects. Their new roles will be defensive tactical instructors for the department. “Do I have a problem with it? I surely do,” BART board member Lynette Sweet, told ABC7 News. “What this does is send a message to the public that yeah you guys are coming and showing up at these meeting, but is BART taking a cavalier attitude and almost an uncaring attitude by allowing some of these officers to test up? I have a problem with it personally as a director. It may not be illegal to allow them to do it, but common sense ought to tell a good manager that it’s not the right thing to do.” John Burris, the attorney representing the family of the deceased, agreed. “Based upon what was observed by them on the video tapes and what they testified to, it’s quite surprising that BART would take this position,” he said. The two officers were chosen from 14 of their colleagues who were vying for the position, according to BART Chief Gary Gee. An attorney for Woffinden and Domenici said that despite the criticism, his clients are entitled to the presumption of innocence. After all, he noted, there have been no allegations brought against them. Although a pay hike does and title change does not accompany the new assignment, it cannot be approved until the internal affairs division of the force has completed its investigation. The officer who actually shot Grant is Johannes Mesherle, has been fired and is battling murder charges.

Iceberg Slim’s Wife, Collaborator Dies The woman who helped propel bestselling street-fiction author Robert “Iceberg Slim” Beck into literary fame has died. Betty Mae Beck had begun preparing a memoir about her life with Iceberg Slim before she passed away last week due to prolonged illness. Read the rest.  

Georgia Police Chief Denies Luxury Car Scam A former Atlanta-area police chief, fired for allegedly hiding confiscated luxury cars for his personal use, called the investigation into the charges a “witch hunt.” Ex-DeKalb County Police Chief Terrell Bolton is accused of falsifying documents to conceal a $32,000 Range Rover and a $55,000 Mercedes he kept for personal cruising. In addition, investigators said in a lengthy report, Bolton took almost two months of unapproved comp time, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. But Bolton described the allegations as “Mickey Mouse” and blamed the Sheriff’s department of violating his rights. “I never had a chance to address any of those issues before this report was written,” he said. “The report is much ado about nothing. It’s the culmination of a witch hunt.” But Tip Green, the officer who ran the police car pool, said that Bolton told him to “hide” the luxury vehicles, according to the Journal-Constitution. “Bolton said to hide them, and he did not want them showing up in his cost center,” Green told him.

An African-American ex-Atlanta Police sergeant is suing the city, alleging that Chief Richard Pennington discriminated against her when he let her go two years ago. When the Atlanta Police Department dismissed Karen Wells in April 2007, officials attributed it to a “lie” she had told, she says in her suit. But Wells, who had been with the Atlanta Police Department for 25 years — the last 14 as a sergeant — at the time, says she never lied about anything, only that she misunderstood the question and made a mistake in her response. In her lawsuit, Wells says that her firing was triggered by an internal investigation about whether another city department had paid police officers properly for working additional hours to guard a water main break. In May 2005, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, a water main broke on Peachtree Street in Buckhead. Wells was granted the extra work hours she had requested to guard the water main break. When asked whether she kept copies of paperwork for “extra jobs,” she said no. Less than two weeks later, the lawsuit contends, Wells told police officials she made a mistake because she was distracted by her mother’s surgery and was suffering from anxiety and depression. The department notified her on April 25, 2007, that she was being terminated, the lawsuit said. Wells, who is Black and 40, argues that she was punished more harshly because of her age, gender and race.

Washington passes stimulus bill. The long-debated economic stimulus bill has passed. Legislators in Washington agreed Friday on a plan of well over $700 billion dollars that is designed to turn around the American financial crisis. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill into law next week. The passage of the plan marks Obama’s biggest successful initiative since he took office last month. The president went round after round with Republicans who argued that earlier versions of the proposal involved unnecessary spending that would only make things worse. Obama consistently argued that action was necessary sooner than later.Bill would reform police procedures. A man whose rape conviction was reversed years after he died in prison is having an impact from beyond the grave. Tim Cole was recently exonerated of sexual assault by a Texas judge for the first time in the state’s history that a conviction was reversed post mortem. Now Texas Sen. Rodney Ellis has introduced reform bills that will keep cops from wrongly influencing witnesses in identifying suspects. Cole rejected plea deals he was offered to serve a lighter sentence in the 1985 rape of a college student. He said he wouldn’t plead guilty to a crime he didn’t commit. The woman identified him as her attacker, but a different man later confessed to the crime and was proven guilty through DNA tests. But Cole died of an asthma attack while picking cotton on a prison farm before the evidence surfaced.

 Atlanta Police have finally identified a robbery suspect they shot dead four days before Christmas. Police say that 44-year-old Carlos Stringer of Riverdale is the man who marked the third shooting by Atlanta officers in just four days. Two of those victims died from their wounds. All of the men shot by police had been confronted during robberies, according to the department. For example, on Dec. 18, officers exchanged gunfire with an armed man police said was running from a house in northwest Atlanta that he had just tried to rob. No one was injured, and the suspect was taken into custody. A day later, an Atlanta police officer shot and killed a man who allegedly kidnapped and tried to rob a pedestrian and was being pursued by a patrol car in northeast Atlanta. Two days after that, Stringer was shot to death while he and another man were running from a Dollar General Store. Police say an officer confronted the men and ordered them to freeze. Stringer was shot in the head and the other man escaped. All three shootings are still being investigated.

Police respond to report of racist murders in New Orleans. New Orleans Police have launched an investigation into reports that White vigilantes hunted down and killed Black people in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and were never prosecuted for their actions. An article published by The Nation magazine, “Katrina’s Hidden Race War,” has sparked a national outcry about the way racism manifested itself in one of the worst national disasters in U.S. history. In a statement released Wednesday, the New Orleans Police Department said that Superintendent Warren J. Riley “is currently looking into the allegations, and asked if anyone has substantial information relative to any incidents of this type call to the New Orleans Police Department Bureau of Investigations.” Riley said the department was unaware of allegations before the article was published. He police did not receive “any complaints or information to substantiate any of the allegations of racial conflicts or vigilante type crimes in the City of New Orleans including the Algiers Point on the west bank of the City.” In the Nation article, two Black shooting survivors – Donnell Herrington and Marcel Alexander – relayed how they had been blasted with shotguns by White vigilantes in the mostly White Algiers Point neighborhood of New Orleans in the wake of the killer storm. The article also quotes several White vigilantes who admit targeting Blacks, even shooting them as if they were “pheasants.” One of the Whites in the story says, proudly, “Three people got shot in just one day!” Eleven Blacks were killed during the shooting spree, according to the report.

Film star reveals experience with police harassment. While he recently played a bully cop in the film Lakeview Terrace, Samuel L. Jackson says he’s been a victim of police mistreatment. “I have been pulled over legitimately because I was doing something wrong, and I have been pulled over because I was Black in the wrong place and my car was too nice,” Jackson tells The Times of Britain. “I have been pulled over in Mississippi; that was frightening. But the guy was like, ‘Hey, Mr. Jackson. Sorry.’…Even in L.A., cops looking at me going, ‘You look familiar.’ And you just gotta say, ‘Oh, O.K.’ Because you don’t know if he’s talking about a wanted poster that he saw today, or he actually saw a movie of mine and can’t quite put that together.”

Singer sued in family dispute. The stepmother of singer Whitney Houston has filed suit against her famous stepkid, saying Houston failed to follow her dad’s estate instructions. Barbara Houston says that, upon her husband John Houston’s death, the singer was to pay the remaining debt on his condo out of a $1 million insurance policy. Any of the leftover cash was to go to Barbara, she claims, but says she never got paid. Whitney, who was the sole beneficiary of her dad’s policy, denies her stepmother’s claims.

A 3-year-old Memphis boy attacks a cop.  A 3-year-old Memphis boy jumped from a car and helped his mother and the driver, who was a suspect in a crime, attack the arresting officer, according to witnesses. FOX News reports that the officer is recovering at a Memphis-area hospital, while the mother has been arrested and is being held. Watch the video below.