Under the new standard, prosecutors can also consider the actions both of officers and of the victim leading up to a deadly encounter, to determine whether the officer acted within the scope of law, policy and training.
Seven months after a Snyder County judge granted full arrest powers to Selinsgrove Area School District Police Chief Mark Wolfberg and two of his part-time officers, Pennsylvania lawmakers have stripped much of their authority away.
The bill would make it a Class E felony to throw or spray water or any other substance against an on-duty police officer, and would carry a possible maximum sentence of four years behind bars.
The United States Senate on Tuesday passed a bill to ensure that the fund to compensate victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks remain funded through 2092, effectively making the federal financial support permanent for those affected by the event.
The Ohio State Senate on Thursday pulled language from a proposed budget that would allow for treatment of PTSD to be included for first responders' workers' compensation package.
Legalization in Illinois also means that nearly 800,000 people with criminal records for purchasing or possessing 30 grams of marijuana or less may have those records expunged.
Golden State politicians wanted to make "necessary" the standard for police to use deadly force, but they settled for "reasonable."
According to the website for California Representative Norma Torres—who is a co-sponsor of the bill along with Republican Richard Burr of North Carolina—the proposed legislation seeks to reclassify communications officers nationally from a non-protective service occupation to a protective one in the Standard Occupational Classification system, giving dispatchers recognition as first responders.
Handlers and K-9s in the United Kingdom are welcoming a new law that went into effect earlier this week that significantly increases the maximum penalty for offenders who attack a service dog.
The California state assembly has unanimously passed a piece of proposed legislation that would change the justification for police to use deadly force from the U.S. Supreme Court's "reasonable" to "necessary."