Air Force limits use of popular handgun after deadly mishap
The SIG Sauer M18, which is used throughout the U.S. military, is a popular civilian pistol used by law enforcement agencies and carried by gun enthusiasts across the country. It is also the subject of multiple lawsuits, with claimants alleging the weapon can fire unprompted.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
12 minutes ago
- Yahoo
NYPD, prosecutorial misconduct court settlement payouts exceed $77 million, Legal Aid report says
NEW YORK — City taxpayers shelled out more than $77 million to settle lawsuits alleging police and prosecutorial misconduct and overturned convictions through the first six months of the year, according to a new report by the Legal Aid Society. The payouts covered 592 cases of alleged misconduct against the NYPD and city prosecutors that were settled out of court. Two settlements had payouts of more than $10 million, with the largest payout topping $13 million, according to the Legal Aid report. If City Hall continues along this track, taxpayers could be on the hook for paying out more than $155 million in police misconduct cases, which would be a drop from the $206 million paid out last year, the highest annual total since 2018. The number of settlements exceeded the 416 made in the first half of 2024, the agency said. The data the Legal Aid Society pulled together for its report did not account for settlements with the New York City Comptroller's Office before a formal lawsuit was filed. An NYPD spokesman said 41% of the cases settled this year — about $72.5 million — were for lawsuits regarding overturned convictions that occurred decades ago in varied circumstances that were not immediately clear. 'Over a third of these payouts are for reverse conviction cases that happened more than 20 years ago,' the spokesman said. 'While these cases are very important, they tell you nothing about the state of policing today.' 'The NYPD works closely and collaboratively with the District Attorney's Offices and their conviction review units to get them the materials they need to review these cases, and ultimately secure these payouts,' the spokesman added. Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry said that, despite the Legal Aid Society's report, 'lawsuit settlements are not a reflection on how police officers are doing their jobs.' 'The city routinely settles lawsuits for reasons that have nothing to do with police officers' conduct, often without informing those officers,' Hendry said. 'It is shameful that those settlements are being used to smear police officers' reputations without any regard for the facts in the case.' The payouts including a $5.7 million settlement to a Brooklyn man who was blinded in one eye when cops tasered him in the face, according to the report. Kenneth Bacote was walking through NYCHA's Kingsborough Houses during the pandemic lockdown on June 2, 2020, when he got into a confrontation with several officers, the lawsuit states. The officers tasered Bacote as they took him into custody, charging him with obstructing traffic, resisting arrest, harassment, and other misdemeanor charges, which were all eventually dropped, court documents show. A taser prong pierced his left eye, which needed to be surgically removed, the lawsuit stated. Doctors told Bacote that he likely won't recover his vision. 'No amount of money can compensate someone for losing sight in one eye, but at least he can live his life more comfortably,' Bacote's attorney, Sanford Rubenstein, said. Jennvine Wong, supervising attorney for the Cop Accountability Project, a special Legal Aid litigation unit, said the amount of settlements being made by the city remain 'disconcerting' even though they are lower than last year's numbers. She said she doesn't see these settlements slowing down anytime soon with Mayor Eric Adams continuing to promote a broken-windows philosophy to crime fighting, which is based on the theory that violent crimes could be stopped by clamping down on misdemeanor quality of life crimes. 'What that means is that the taxpayers are going to be paying for the Adams administration policies for many, many years, even after he's out of office,' Wong said. _____ Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
12 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Infamous Mexican drug lord to plead guilty after being brought to US
Ismael Mario Zambada García, the former drug lord and top leader of the Sinaloa Cartel known as El Mayo, will plead guilty to federal drug charges brought by the United States Attorney's Office in Brooklyn, according to an entry on the court docket. El Mayo is due in court next week for a conference that, according to the docket, is now a "change of plea" hearing. Federal prosecutors said earlier this month they would not seek the death penalty for Zambada, who helped build the Sinaloa Cartel from a regional group to a major smuggler of cocaine, heroin and other illicit drugs into U.S., authorities have said. MORE: 'El Mayo' in plea talks in Brooklyn federal drug case, prosecutor says He was charged with 17 counts related to drug trafficking, firearms offenses and money laundering. It was not immediately clear to what charge or charges he would plead guilty. Zambada was arrested in Texas last summer after arriving in a private plane with one of Joaquin Guzmán's sons, Joaquín Guzmán López. Joaquín Guzmán López remains in custody in the U.S. and pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking charges last year. Another of El Chapo's sons, Ovidio Guzman Lopez, pleaded guilty to two counts of drug conspiracy and two counts of knowingly engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise last month, according to the Justice Department. As part of the plea, he is also set to forfeit $80 million. Ovidio Guzman Lopez admitted, through the plea, that he and his three brothers took over control of the Sinaloa Cartel after the dramatic arrest of their father, El Chapo, in 2016. He was arrested in January 2023 and extradited to the U.S. later that year. MORE: Top Sinaloa cartel leaders, including son of El Chapo, taken into US custody: DOJ El Chapo's other two sons -- Ivan Archivaldo Guzman Salazar and Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar -- have been charged in the U.S. but are not in custody. There are $10 million awards from the U.S. government for each man's arrest and conviction. Violence has surged in Sinaloa since the arrest of Zambada last year. There were about four times as many murders in the first half of 2025 as there were in the first six months of 2024, Reuters reported last month. ABC News' Meredith Deliso contributed to this report.
Atlantic
14 minutes ago
- Atlantic
Law and Order: Sandwich Crimes Unit
' WASHINGTON—The Justice Department worker accused of throwing a Subway sandwich at a federal agent was re-arrested by an armed team of at least a half-dozen US Marshals in a dramatic Wednesday night raid, new video shows. Sean Charles Dunn, 37, was cuffed a second time inside his apartment about a mile northwest of the White House—after being slapped with a felony assault charge. Footage of the raid was posted by the White House on X Thursday evening with the caption: 'Nighttime Routine: Operation Make D.C. Safe Again Edition.'' — The New York Post, August 15 Police headquarters, Washington, D.C., present day. A dusty, small office. A trainee walks in carrying a cake with CONGRATULATIONS! 25 YEARS WITHOUT A SANDWICH-BASED CRIME written on it in large frosted letters. Senior Detective J, Junior Detective F, and Sergeant P are sitting around. Everyone claps. Trainee: Who wants to blow it out? A panicked junior detective, K, rushes in. Detective K: Turn on the TV. They turn on the TV. On the screen, footage of a DOJ employee tossing a hoagie at a federal law-enforcement officer and running off. The trainee drops the cake. Detective J: No! Detective K: What in tarnation were those officers doing there? Don't they know the first thing about sandwich-crime prevention? Trainee: It doesn't look like it hit very hard. Seemed soggy. Lady Sleuth: No. They'll count it. Remember the hot-dog incident in '73? Detective F: But a hot dog isn't a sandwich! Detective J: The record keepers didn't agree. Trainee: We should have fired the record keepers! Detective J: (Slamming his fist on the table) That's not how we DO things in the sandwich division. Doesn't matter if we get bad press, like a subpar panini. We don't cut corners, unless the sandwich in question is a round-type sandwich. Detective F: Some are. Officer J: You think 25 years without sandwich crime just HAPPENS? Trainee: No. Officer J: We worked for this. It hasn't been easy. When I got started on this beat, you couldn't walk down the street in Washington without having a grilled cheese shoved in your face, if you were lucky. Egg salad, if you weren't. Detective F: Not all the sandwiches were harmless. Some were clubs. People were too frightened of sandwiches to build a Subway in Georgetown. Officer K: I still have a scar from when I took a meatball sub to the chin in '96 and, afterward, got into an unrelated knife fight. Officer J: I started here after transferring from the bread-crimes division in France. I spent decades hunting down a man who stole bread one time. My name is Javert, but that's not important. His name was Jean Valjean. I also resented him because I had just the one name and he had two. Trainee: That seems excessive. Officer Javert: I think so too! One name is enough for anyone. Officer Javert: Right. It was. It turned out what he needed was rehabilitation and a second chance, not me chasing him across France, singing. But we learned from it! We realized if we were proactive rather than reactive, if we got involved in the communities we served, we could figure out what was going on and stop it. Detective F: Most sandwich crimes are crimes of opportunity. People who aren't carrying sandwiches don't tend to commit sandwich crimes. They do other types of crime. We took that statistic to the chief and said, 'You're sure you want us to go all in on eliminating sandwich crime? Not regular crime? Consider all the murders we could prevent if we just handed sandwiches to people who were about to do other crimes.' And they said, 'No, solve sandwich crime.' Detective F: Lunchables are a gateway. Officer Javert: Teaching little kids to assemble their own sandwiches, as though it were play! We tackled all of that. We started from the bread up, tackling the root causes, and then the additional causes that were layered on top, and then any sauce that was on top of that. Officer K: I remember when Mark Warner made what he claimed was a tuna melt. And everyone said, 'Call the sandwich-crimes unit!' Trainee: That was what started me down this path, sir. I saw it, and I knew it was an abomination, and I wanted to stop it. Officer Javert: The point is, people trust us. We aren't just police officers. We know the community we serve. We know how to deescalate. We look for non-carceral solutions. We ask: why would someone want to throw a sandwich? How can we fix that? We know who has beef and if that beef is corned. Detective F: That didn't happen overnight. We learned what to do: control the mayonnaise supply. And what to avoid: goofy, authoritarian displays of force. Officer K: Because no one has the urge. Trainee: And that's because of all your tireless work. Detective F: Or a caprese. Officer Javert: —with troops! It's not right! (s tares at the TV and sighs) And they just—they ruined it all! They're not stopping crime, regular or sandwich! They're just making good people anxious to walk through their own neighborhoods. I'm so angry I could throw a good-size flatbread! Detective F: (Gasps in horror) NO! You've been a mentor! Officer Javert: With soft bread! A limp one, with the tomato already falling off! Just up into the air, not at any one in particular. bOfficer K: Listen to yourself! Six heavily armed federal law-enforcement officers knock down the door, handcuff Javert, and start to haul him off. Federal enforcement: Sandwich crime is a federal crime. They drag him away, sirens blaring.
