Pigs behaving badly, five horrifying US police screw-ups from 2014

This year has not been a good one to the US police - or more accurately the people they are supposed to be serving and protecting.

We look back at five cases illustrating how screwed-up American law enforcement really is.

5: Cop placed on leave, investigated for not using taser on suicidal student

After talking down a suicidal student, a California State University Monterey Bay police officer was placed on leave and under investigation for not shooting the student with a taser according to KSBW.com.

"Our officer said and felt that there was no need for the level of force that was applied, and my understanding was that's why he didn't deploy his Taser," Statewide University Police Association union President Jeff Solomon said.

Marina police claim, however, that the officer froze.

Apparently after having successfully defused the situation the cop left the student to go get a glass of water. While he was away three other Marina officers began physically restraining the student.

When the cop got back, they told him to tase the student, an order the officer refused resulting in a failure to act complaint being filed.

"It defies logic and is extremely disappointing that, at a time when law enforcement is under fire for using more force than necessary, an officer is being terminated for attempting to use civilised methods to resolve a situation." the student's father told the union.

4: Cop flashes drivers his penis, gets caught by his own car camera

According to the Smoking Gun, Jason Miller's is currently being charged with official misconduct and  public lewdness.

Apparently the evidence against him is quite damning - his own police cruiser caught video footage of his unorthodox approach to law enforcement.

At least five men got a view of his genitals, one being repeatedly asked if he noticed if the officer's fly was down.

This isn't the only thing he is in trouble for, in one of the cases he stopped a man who said he was coming from a bar and had a few drinks.

He didn't so much as write up a ticket, but according to the affidavit “you can hear what appears to be the sound of a zipper opening and/or closing.”

3: Cops kill man for holding toy gun he picked up in store, threaten girlfriend

After police killed 22-year-old John Crawford for carrying a toy gun he had picked up in a Beavercreek, Ohio Walmart, they were caught on video aggressively interrogating his girlfriend.

According to The Guardian, "Tasha Thomas was reduced to swearing on the lives of her relatives that John Crawford III had not been carrying a firearm when they entered the Walmart in Beavercreek, near Dayton, to buy crackers, marshmallows and chocolate bars on the evening of 5 August."

“You lie to me and you might be on your way to jail,” detective Rodney Curd told Thomas.

Crawford had been shot after a customer phoned 911, claiming he had been pointing a gun at a passer by. Surveillance footage later showed he had picked up a BB gun in the store, and had been unconsciously waving it about while talking to his girlfriend on his cellphone.

The cops didn't tell her he only had a BB gun.

2: 'I can't breath'

After police throttled Eric Garner to death in New York - you'd have expected them to be a little more cautious with their chokeholds.

Now a new video has gone viral showing police punching a 15-year-old girl in the face and grabbing her in a chokehold.

The video shows her screaming "I can't breath" - the same words as Eric Garner shortly before he died at the hands of officers in New York earlier this year.

Luis Santiago, the man who posted the video on YouTube, says that they police tried to get him to delete it.

They were unsuccessful.

1: Cleveland cop shoots 12-year-old  - he also had a toy gun

After a Cleveland police officer shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, the family were distraught.

So the cops arrested his 14-year-old sister as she tried to rush to his side and threatened to arrest his mother. They then gave her the choice of either riding in the cop car with her daughter, or in the ambulance with her dying son.

The family as launched a lawsuit against the officer and the police.

According to Cleveland.com, the police union claims the officers involved cleared by prosecutors.

"Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association President Jeff Follmer said Monday night on MSNBC's "All In with Chris Hayes" that the officers -- Frank Garmback and Tim Loehmann, who pulled the trigger -- were justified in the killing of the 12-year-old boy and that both men were cleared in a use-of-force investigation," the report said.

Meanwhile the mayor's spokesman told the reporters that the city does not prosecute use of force cases, that is the county's job.