The man a Decatur police officer shot at in June said he was on the ground when the gun fired, despite police claims officers believed the man was running at them with a weapon.

Officer Frank Linam was among a group of Decatur police officers who forced entry intoMaury Randolph‘s mother’s apartment on June 28 to arrest Randolph on 10 warrants for misdemeanor traffic offenses.

Linam fired his weapon in the direction of Randolph, who was not armed, according to police. No one was injured, and an internal investigation by the Police Department in July concluded the officer did not violate the law.

“Why didn’t (Linam) have a Taser if he was just trying to protect himself? If I would have been standing, the bullet wouldn’t have missed and I wouldn’t be here today,” said Randolph, 36.

Randolph, who has been in Morgan County Jail since the arrest, agreed to a phone interview with The Decatur Daily. Decatur police declined to comment on Randolph’s statements.

Decatur police spokesman Lt. John Crouch said Linam remains on desk duty because Morgan County District Attorney Scott Anderson plans to present the case to a grand jury.

Linam’s body camera captured audio and some video of the incident in which the bullet missed Randolph and went through the wall into an adjacent occupied apartment, police said.

Randolph said he and his brother were barbecuing outside the apartment complex when police arrived.

“I didn’t know what they were doing or who they were there to get,” Randolph said. “I knew I had warrants, so I went back inside and locked the door. I didn’t think they’d be coming to get me at my momma’s. When I got inside, I went to the bedroom at the back of the apartment.”

Randolph said he called his brother, who was still outside, and found out a group of officers were outside the door to the apartment.

“When I looked out the peep hole in the door, I was like, ‘I’m not opening the door until momma gets back because there are so many cops out there,’ ” he said. “The police came up and started beating on the door, and they just kept beating. After a few minutes, my brother said, ‘You’ve got two minutes before they’re going to kick the door in.’ ”

Police said the officers forced entry into the apartment after repeated failed attempts to get Randolph to open the door. Randolph said he went to the back of the hallway and got on the ground just before police entered the apartment.

“I was on my knees in the hallway, right in front of the doorway to the bedroom, when they kicked the door,” he said. “I told my brother, ‘Here they come.’ ”

A statement from police said Randolph ran out of a dark back bedroom and through a dark hallway toward the officers with his arms extended in front of him in a manner consistent with holding something in his hands.

Body camera footage shows the apartment door fly open with a second kick from police.

“I fell face-down and onto my stomach because I was already down on my knees,” Randolph said. “I said, ‘I’m down; I’m down.’ The second time I said ‘I’m down’ is when I heard the gunshot go off. After that, I was quiet.”

An officer is heard on the body camera footage asking where the shot came from.

Linam replied, “That was me, that was me, no hits. I fired; there was no hits. Out of nowhere, out of the blackness, I see somebody coming like that.”

The back wall of the bedroom had a bullet hole about three feet from the floor. It is a straight line from the front door and down the short hallway to where the bullet entered the wall.

“If (Randolph) had been standing, it might have hit him,” said Randolph’s mother, Diane Clark, who was not at the apartment during the incident.

Police said no weapon was found, and Randolph surrendered without incident.

Video footage of the incident is too dark to depict the incident clearly inside the hallway.

Randolph is being held on $4,000 bond.

Huntsville police say several people in a Huntsville neighborhood stood and watched as a police officer struggled with a suspect.

Police say, a hit and run suspect Devonte Conerly tried to grab the officer’s gun.

Officers eventually cuffed Conerly, who’s now charged for felony assault on an officer.

Police then asked bystanders why no one came to the officer’s aid.

Many people might not be aware of this, but it’s actually illegal to not help out if an officer is in distress and asking for assistance from bystanders.

It’s unclear if the Huntsville police officer involved in the incident Wednesday ever asked the bystanders to help him, but he said the suspect was trying to grab his gun and none of the witnesses stepped up to help.

Alabama legal code said refusing to aid a police officer is actually a misdemeanor crime. If you’re in a situation where you see a police officer trying to  arrest someone and he asks you specifically to help him, you could be charged if you don’t respond.

Bill Davis with the Fraternal Order of Police said unless it appears to be a dangerous situation, even if you’re not legally obligated to help, you should be morally obligated to help.

“I wouldn’t ask anybody in the public sector to get involved in a shootout or anything like that, if a police officer is involved in a shootout, get out of the way,” Davis said. “He’s not going to ask you to get involved in it, and I wouldn’t suggest it so if it’s just an altercation where someone is wrestling with the officer and it looks like they’re getting the best of the officer, yes you need to help.”

The bystanders said they felt the need to video tape the incident Wednesday in case something happened.

An Alabama cop was wearing a body camera that was not turned on when he fatally shot a man who held a “large metal spoon in a threatening manner” as he approached the officer, according to Tuscaloosa County officials.

Police killed Jeffory Tevis, a 50-year-old white man, on Thursday evening after responding to a reported assault at his residence in east Tuscaloosa. A fight between Tevis and the officer ensued, during which the officer used a Taser before shooting Tevis with a gun.

Authorities said they believe Tevis was “suffering from a mental episode” or under the influence of illegal drugs at the time of the shooting.

“He was just undergoing an extremely violent mental episode we believe,” police captain Gary Hood said in an interview. Hood is the head of the Tuscaloosa County Metro Homicide Unit, which is investigating the shooting.

The officer was wearing a body camera but did not have it turned on, investigators have confirmed to the Guardian.

Tuscaloosa police require all officers to have body cameras on “any time there’s going to be enforcement action taken”, Captain Brad Mason said. When asked whether the officer violated protocol by having his camera turned off, Mason declined to comment, citing the privacy of personnel matters.

Hood confirmed that Tevis had only the spoon in his possession and wasn’t armed with any additional weapons. Hood estimated that the spoon was “maybe 10-12 inches” in length.

Tevis was described by the attending officer, who has not yet been identified, as “very upset and agitated”. Tevis reportedly told the officer that he had been attacked by someone inside his apartment, while another man told the officer that Tevis had threatened him. The officer saw blood on Tevis’s face and legs, according to a Tuscaloosa County press release.

Police later said that they don’t believe Tevis was assaulted and that his wounds were self-inflicted.

The officer and Tevis were talking on the balcony outside Tevis’s residence when Tevis hit the officer and the two began fighting, police said. During the struggle, the officer used his Taser on Tevis to no effect, according to police. According to this account, Tevis “began charging” toward the officer and ignored verbal commands to stop.

Tevis then “raised his hand over his head holding the large metal spoon in a threatening manner and rushed toward the officer”, the Tuscaloosa county press release continued. The officer fired two shots and Tevis was pronounced dead at the scene. The officer, who has been with Tuscaloosa police for nearly 16 years, was treated for minor injuries related to the incident, Hood said. Hood estimated that the interaction between the officer and Tevis lasted less than a minute.

Tuscaloosa police released a statement about the shooting but declined to comment further on the case, referring questions to the Tuscaloosa County Homicide Unit. Hood said six witnesses were present at the shooting. A grand jury will review the unit’s findings and determine whether the shooting was justified, Hood said.

Cpl. Josh Coleman and Mason, the dog he left to die in his patrol car

UPDATE @ 6/27/2015 3:49 PM: Initially prosecutors declined to press charges against Cpl. Coleman, but the District Attorney’s office has now decided to conduct an official investigation, saying charges may still be filed after a grand jury review.

GULF SHORES, Ala. — A police dog died Thursday after being left in a hot police cruiser by his own handler.

Cpl. Josh Coleman left the dog, Mason, in the car while he attended a hurricane preparation conference. Coleman says he forgot that he’d left Mason in the back of the car, although no reports state the length of time the dog was trapped in the vehicle before he was found.

Mason was discovered and taken to a veterinarian when Coleman returned to the vehicle. Police originally said Friday morning that Mason’s condition had “improved,” but he died later that evening of injuries sustained from heat exposure. The dog was three years old.

Sources describe Mason, a yellow Labrador Retriever, as a “community engagement officer,” presumably used to help improve the public’s perception of police, rather than an “enforcement K-9” used for attacking suspects.

The Baldwin County District Attorney’s Office says Coleman will not be charged with a crime. The police department says Coleman will face “sanctions,” but did not explain the nature of the sanctions.

League of the South demonstrators

ANNISTON, Ala. — The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified two Alabama police officers as members of what they say is a nationalist hate group. The city of Anniston placed the two officers on administrative leave Wednesday.

Lt. Josh Doggrell, of the Anniston Police Department, spoke in 2013 at a conference held by the neo-Confederate group known as the League of the South. Doggrell was later joined by his colleague, Lt. Wayne Brown, who is also employed as an Anniston police officer.

Lt. Josh Doggrell of the Anniston Police Department

According to the SPLC, Doggrell spoke about “gun rights, county supremacy, and his loyalty to the League.” They claim the League of the South is a racist organization that subscribes to an ideology called “kinism.”

“Kith and kin comes before illegal national mandates,” Doggrell said during his speech at the League’s conference, lending credence to their accusation.

The SPLC further details the group’s ideology, writing:

Kith and kin is part of an explicitly racist ideology called “kinism” that Hill has long promoted through the LOS. The Kinist Institute, an organization that promotes kinism, has called for laws against racial intermarriage, an end to non-white immigration, expelling all “aliens” (“to include all Jews and Arabs”), and restricting the right to vote to white, landholding men over the age of 21. In the past, LOS websites have referred to kinism as “a biblical solution for all races” that will save the South by preventing “white genocide.”

The SPLC has more data to back up their claims that the League of the South is a racist organization. The League’s president, Michael Hill, wrote an essay last month called “A few notes on an American race war.”

“Negroes are more impulsive than whites,” Hill wrote. “Tenacity and organization are not the negroes [sic] strong suits. If [a race war] could be won by ferocity alone, he might have a chance. But like the adrenaline rush that sparks it, ferocity is short lived. And it can be countered by cool discipline, an historic white trait, and all that stems from it.”

League of the South President Michael Hill

Doggrell’s connection to the league is not in dispute, reportedly anticipating questions regarding his membership to the organization. “I’m not going to sell out my position with the League, as something I believe in strongly,” Doggrell said. “If it came down to it, I’d choose the League.”

Members of the SPLC group Hatewatch contacted the Anniston Police Department, but were directed to the Anniston city manager, Brian Johnson, who described the League as a “civic club.” Hatewatch proposed a hypothetical scenario in which the Anniston police department hired officers who were members of the Ku Klux Klan hate group, and Johnson responded “We could not terminate an employee solely on his or her membership in a legal, lawfully formed, civic club or organization.”

Following the publication of the information and the city manager’s response, city spokeswoman Aziza Jackson confirmed that the two officers were placed on suspension.

“After being made aware of the Wednesday, June 17 article by the SPLC, the City of Anniston is taking the allegations made against Lt. Brown and Lt. Doggrell very seriously and have placed both officers on administrative leave. Lt. Brown and Lt. Doggrell do not speak for the City of Anniston nor the Anniston Police Department. The City of Anniston has commenced an investigation into this matter and will work diligently to ensure the appropriate action is taken.”

The full report by the SPLC is available here.