Feds: Cleveland Cops Use Excessive Force Routinely

Cleveland police use unnecessary force so often that the department must let an independent monitor make sure reforms are put into place, reports NBC News. That's one result of a Justice Department investigation of 600 incidents between 2010 and 2013 that faults the department for poor training and a "pattern and practice of using excessive force." The investigation began well before the recent police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice at a city recreation center, and it's the same kind of federal investigation now underway in Ferguson, Missouri, notes CBS News.

"We saw too many incidents in which officers accidentally shot someone either because they fired their guns accidentally or because they shot the wrong person," says the report. In one incident, officers fired 137 shots at a car with two unarmed civilians inside who were fleeing police. Both were killed. In another, officers kicked and punched a man who was restrained and on his stomach, reports AP. He was hospitalized for a broken bone near his eye. (The officer in the Eric Garner case maintains that his chokehold was a wrestling move learned at the police academy.)