A traveler from Maine said a small-town Louisiana police officer smirked after fatally shooting his "incredibly friendly" dog on Monday.

Brandon Carpenter, 28, told The Huffington Post Tuesday that he and 21-year-old Logan Laliberte, both of Maine, had hopped off a freight train and were walking through the town of Sulphur, Louisiana, with Carpenter's dog -- a 14-month-old Labrador, Newfoundland, golden retriever mix named Arzy Kensington -- when it started raining. The men were on their way to visit friends in Lake Charles.

They climbed into the back of a parked box truck in the near-empty parking lot of the Southwest Daily News to take shelter, Carpenter said. Before long, a police car pulled up and an officer, gun drawn, ordered them out of the truck.

The officer, Brian Thierbach of the Sulphur Police Department, spotted Arzy and told the men to "get your dog," according to Carpenter. He said the officer watched him tie Arzy to a nearby fence with a 3 1/2-foot leash before Thierbach handcuffed both men, ordered them to the ground facing away from Arzy, and asked, "Is this dog going to bite me or attack me?"

"No," Carpenter said he responded. "He is an incredibly friendly dog."

Twenty seconds later, Carpenter told HuffPost, he heard a single shot.

Eric Midkiff, Southwest Daily News circulation manager, said his boss phoned him around 7 a.m., asking if he knew anything about the men in the parking lot. Midkiff "took off" and headed to the office, and by the time he arrived, "the officer already had Brandon and the other guy on the ground."

Midkiff, 33, told HuffPost he stayed about 20 feet from the men, and heard Thierbach asking if the dog was going to attack. Midkiff said Thierbach was standing on the bumper of the box truck petting Arzy.

"The dog was rubbing up against the cop," Midkiff said. "He would rub the dog's back and then push him away. All of a sudden, he just jumped down and shot the dog in the head."

Midkiff said he could see both Thierbach and the dog clearly. "That dog did not bite that officer," he said. "The dog was wagging his tail, his tongue was hanging out."

Just before 2pm EDT, the New York City Police Department called via Twitter for photos of citizens with its officers. Almost immediately the campaign #myNYPD seemed to backfire, as users flooded the hashtag with photos decrying alleged police brutality.

Do you have a photo w/ a member of the NYPD? Tweet us & tag it
#myNYPD. It may be featured on our Facebook. pic.twitter.com/mE2c3oSmm6
- NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) April 22, 2014

This is apparently what happens when a 22-year-old with down syndrome attempts to walk half a block home at 9:30 at night by himself in Miami-Dade, Florida:


Gilberto Powell says the police were following him in their cruiser as he was walking home. The police report says the officers decided to stop Gilberto after they noticed a "bulge" in Gilberto's pants. After an officer tried to conduct a patdown, the report claims Gilberto attempted to flee.

Gilberto denies trying to run away and says he did everything the officer asked him to do. What happened next resulted in the photograph above.

Alexia Pearce adores her 'gorgeous' three-year-old son, yet she is aware that his life - a life blighted by cerebral palsy and chronic lung disease - is unlikely to last long into his teens. In this moving account, she asks: are we always right to save premature babies?

Alexia Pearce looks at her three-year-old son Nathan every day and feels the same rush of guilt. Guilt that she chose to let him live when he was born too early, just 23 weeks into her pregnancy. "If I'd known then what I know now about what extremely premature babies have to go though, I would not have chosen that for my little boy.

"I would have wanted them to give him to me and for him to pass away in my arms. I find the whole issue of what he has been put through, what he continues to be put through, very difficult. I feel very guilty that I took that decision, postponing the inevitable."

Google has been caught afoul of the law by displaying web ads linked to a person's health history, according to Canada's interim privacy commissioner Chantal Bernier.

An investigation by her office backed up a man's complaints that he was seeing so-called behavioural advertisements based on his web browsing history. After searching for information about devices to treat sleep apnea, he began to see ads for those devices as he browsed the web.

While behavioural advertising is not illegal, Canada's privacy law does not allow consumers to be targeted based on "sensitive personal information," including their health.

Google's privacy policy outlaws displaying advertisements based on race, religion, sexual orientation or health. But the Mountain View, Calif.-based company acknowledged that some advertisers using its ad-serving platform were not following the policy.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says "something is going to happen" to get Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy to stop letting his cattle graze on federal land.

"It's obvious that you can't just walk away from this. And we can speculate all we want to speculate to what's going to happen next," Reid told KSNV-TV. "But I don't think it's going to be tomorrow that something is going to happen, but something will happen. We are a nation of laws, not of men and women."

Reid called militias staying at Bundy's Bunkerville ranch "domestic violent terrorist-wannabes."

Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., disagreed with Reid, telling KSNV that these militia members are "patriots" and took issue with how the U.S. Bureau of Land Management handled the situation.

19-year-old Samantha Ramsey died last weekend after Deputy Tyler Brockman shot her multiple times as she was trying to leave a house party in Boone County, Kentucky.

Brockman is claiming self defense, stating that she almost ran him over with her vehicle.

The video shows Brockman approaching the vehicle as Ramsey tries to drive away. He shot her off camera, but witnesses seen gasping in the video state it was an execution.

It's hard to fathom self defense on the part of the officer - he approached the vehicle, somehow gets in the way, then feels he's in danger so he has to shoot and kill this unarmed girl at point-blank range, which obviously would render the vehicle out of control.

Seems to be a case of 'do what I say or else', which is an attitude running rampant through law enforcement across this country. We are hiring goons now, not police officers.

The United States Transportation Security Administration has reached a tentative settlement in the highly publicized lawsuit filed by a mother who was allegedly harassed by TSA officers when she requested her breast milk not be x-rayed, authorities announced Tuesday.

The TSA again apologizes to Stacey Armato for the incident that took place at the Phoenix Airport on Jan. 25, 2010 and also agreed to clarify its internal procedures for screening breast milk in the tentative deal.

"We brought this lawsuit for one reason - to bring clarity and policy change for breastfeeding mothers traveling with breast milk," Armato said. "Hopefully what I experienced at the Phoenix Airport in 2010 will never happen to another mother traveling with her breast milk."

A North Carolina officer was caught on video allegedly lying about a retired Marine combat instructor "being aggressive" in his own home, and then took the cell phones away from his family members who were trying to record the encounter.

Retired United States Marine combat instructor Carlos Jaramillo provided the blog Photography Is Not A Crime with video of Onslow County Sheriff's Deputy Natalie Barber responding to his home over the weekend over a dispute between neighbors.

At some point, Barber and Jaramillo began arguing about whether he was legally obligated to provide her with his identification. He offered her a government-issued Veterans Affair card, but the deputy insisted on seeing a driver's license.

That's when Jaramillo informed Barber that he was going to record the incident "for my safety."

The embattled head of Massachusett's child welfare agency resigned Tuesday under mounting pressure following the deaths of three children, with Gov. Deval Patrick saying it was impossible for her to continue in her job.

Olga Roche's resignation comes after calls from top Democratic lawmakers - including Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate President Therese Murray - for Roche to be replaced as commissioner of the Department of Children and Families.

The state's DCF is also involved in the contentious custody battle involving Connecticut teenager Justina Pelletier, who for more than a year has been in state care after her parents disagreed with a diagnosis made at Boston Children's Hospital that contradicted another diagnosis and were then met with allegations of medical child abuse. The Pelletiers continue to petition for the department to return custody. It was recently announced that a reunification plan was in the works to at least send Justina back to her home state.

"I have accepted her resignation because I believe it is not possible for the agency to move forward in this environment with her at the helm," said John Polanowicz, secretary of the state's Executive Office of Health and Human Services, which oversees the DCF.

The agency named Erin Deveney as its interim commissioner. She has been working there for about 30 days following a stint at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

"Olga Roche presided over the horrific mistreatment of Justina Pelletier and the tragic deaths of children in DCF custody," the Pelletier's spokesman Rev. Patrick Mahoney said. "We hope Erin Deveney will correct the systemic injustice of the previous administration by taking immediate steps to free Justina into the loving arms of her family and accepting the reunification proposal."