The incident Tuesday was the latest flare-up in an increasingly tense dispute between the Boston Police Department and the Massachusetts Department of Transportation over the use of civilian flaggers at city construction sites overseen by the state.

State officials say they want to use civilian flaggers, allowed under a new state law, to save money; police in Boston and elsewhere, who can earn huge amounts of money working at construction sites, have argued that public safety is better served by having officers, rather than civilians, working the jobs.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio and officers arrest a man for having a seizure, deny him medical attention for 90 minutes; Man dies.

Police, for all practical matters, have rights far beyond those which ordinary citizens enjoy. Police may request identification from people, detain people, beat people, and even kill innocents, with little or no fear of the negative repercussions which any of us would expect were we to do any of those things. My father described similar experiences in Birmingham in the 1950s. Welcome to the new, more egalitarian America: we are all niggers now.

A 66-year-old British woman was fined and ordered to wear an ankle monitor as punishment for selling a goldfish to a 14-year-old.

A US federal appeals court says three Seattle police officers were justified when they used a stun gun on a pregnant mother who refused to sign a traffic ticket.

Malaika Brooks was driving her son to school in 2004 when she was stopped for exceeding the speed limit.

The officers used a Taser three times when she refused to get out of her car.

A panel of judges ruled 2-1 the officers were justified in using force because Brooks could have picked her keys up off the floor, started the car and driven away.