#8 - Oliver Banfield
In the early morning hours of July the 26th of 2020, a mother of 2 was attacked by a strange
man while walking home alone in the West Midlands region of England. The victim,
identified as 37-year-old Emma Homer, later recounted how she’d only been a few doors
down from her Warwickshire house when she was suddenly accosted. She described how it seemed
like her shadowy assailant was “pretending to be a police officer”, as he allegedly shouted at her
to get “on the floor now” before forcefully pulling her arms behind her back. The man’s
female companion eventually crossed the road to intervene, pulling him off of a terrified Homer.
She reassured the latter that the man was simply drunk, at which point he got back in the victim’s
face and shouted “why are you following me?” The woman pushed him away, to which he responded by
forcing her back onto the ground, holding her in a headlock, and repeatedly kicking her. In
the incident’s aftermath, Homer reported the assault to Warwickshire Police, but allegedly had
to “fight for a reaction” from the authorities. The department subsequently apologized for the
delay in the commencement of their investigation into the matter. Through the use of CCTV footage,
detectives were able to identify Homer’s attacker as an off-duty probationary officer named Oliver
Banfield. The 25-year-old man had reportedly been quite intoxicated on the night in question,
and had become convinced that Homer had been stalking him and his partner. In March of 2021,
Banfield pleaded guilty to assault by beating and was given a 14-week curfew,
during which time he was prohibited from leaving his house between the hours of 7 pm
and 7 am. He was suspended by the West Midlands Police, but later resigned from his position.
#7 - Emma
Bewick
Officials with the South Wales police force learned that one of their constables had been
stalking her ex-boyfriend, Gavin Burrows, over a period of weeks during October of
2021. The officer in question, 21-year-old Emma Bewick, had only been with the force
for a matter of months before she became the subject of an internal investigation. According
to subsequent reports, Bewick, a recent graduate of the University of South Wales,
“conducted a course of unwanted contact” with Burrows by repeatedly showing up
at his home unannounced, reaching out to him, and “attending at places where he frequents”,
including his place of work. Bewick ultimately admitted stalking without fear, alarm,
or distress during a trial at Cwmbran Magistrates Court. She was consequently given a suspended
10-week sentence. Following an accelerated misconduct hearing, the disgraced officer was
fired from her position and barred from serving as a public official at any point in the future.
#6 - Wanda Vázquez
Wanda Vazquez, the former governor of Puerto Rico, was arrested on August the 4th of 2022, for taking
part in a bribery scheme while in office. It was subsequently reported that, from December of 2019
through June of 2020, Vazquez had engaged in the alleged corruption with several co-conspirators,
including a Venezuelan-Italian bank owner, a former FBI agent, a bank president and a
political consultant. The scheme revolved around the prominent politician’s efforts to finance
her 2020 gubernatorial election campaign. According to the US Department of Justice,
an international bank owned by Julio Martín Herrera had been under investigation by Puerto
Rico’s Commissioner of Financial Institutions in connection to a series of suspicious,
unreported transactions. In exchange for providing Vasquez’s campaign with financial support, Herrera
asked that the governor dismiss the Commissioner scrutinizing his institution and appoint a new
one of his choosing. Vasquez accepted the bribe, and ultimately appointed a former consultant for
Herrera's bank as the new Financial Institutions commissioner in May of 2020. The former governor
and her accomplices were each charged with conspiracy, federal programs bribery, and honest
services wire fraud, which carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison if convicted on all counts.
#5 - Brandon Wilkerson
An Indiana police officer encountered an unclothed man standing in the open doorway of a pick-up
truck while patrolling the Evergreen Plaza in Trail Creek in the early hours of August the 12th
of 2022. The officer approached the vehicle, which was reportedly parked in the lot outside
Decoy’s Neighborhood Bar & Grill, at which point he realized that the individual appeared to have
been engaging in intimate relations with a woman. The man, later identified as Brandon Wilkerson,
was detained on charges of public indecency and public intoxication, as his blood alcohol content
registered at nearly twice the legal limit on a portable breathalyzer test. It subsequently
emerged that the 35-year-old suspect was actually a La Porte police officer who’d been off-duty at
the time of the lascivious public incident. He was automatically suspended 5 days without pay
in connection to his arrest. As of the case’s latest updates, the La Porte Police Merit
Commission hadn’t yet decided whether to hand Wilkerson any additional job-related punishment.
#4 - Nicole Miller
Scottish police constable Nicole Miller was accused of waging an extended campaign of
psychological abuse and coercion against her former girlfriend between April of 2019 and
August of 2020. As was detailed during the case’s eventual trial in Falkirk Sheriff Court, the
31-year-old officer was alleged to have verbally abused her partner, Rochelle Kerr, even as the
couple prepared to welcome their first child, who had reportedly been conceived through in vitro
fertilization. During the course of their 4-year romantic involvement, Miller would regularly
“scream, shout, and swear” at Kerr. The latter described how she’d eventually become withdrawn
and felt “trapped, controlled and manipulated” as a consequence of her partner’s abusive behavior.
Their relationship had experienced one of its many contentious boiling points while Kerr was
still 35-weeks pregnant, and had told Miller that she wanted to finish her pregnancy at her mother’s
house. The manipulative constable took issue with Kerr’s decision to leave, however, and proceeded
to hide her car keys so she couldn’t escape. The relationship finally came to an end after the
pair had the latest in a seemingly endless series of heated arguments in the late summer of 2020,
“tearing Kerr away” from her recently-born son. During the domestic abuse case’s court
proceedings, Miller vehemently denied her former partner’s allegations, tearfully contending that
it had actually been Kerr who’d acted as the antagonist of their unstable relationship.
#3 - Leonid Kozhara
On February the 22nd of 2020, advertising mogul Sergiy Starytskiy was found dead inside the
home of former Ukrainian foreign minister Leonid Kozhara. The police indicated that
56-year-old Starytskiy had suffered a fatal gunshot wound from a firearm belonging to the
retired public official. Kozhara and his wife, who were both home at the time of the deadly incident,
claimed that the victim had inflicted his mortal injuries himself while in a separate
room. However, “investigators and prosecutors reviewed the circumstances of the death...and
concluded that Starytskiy couldn’t have shot himself”, as the Kozharas contended.
The National Police used forensic, ballistics, and molecular genetic tests to gather enough
evidence to formally charge the former foreign minister with Starytskiy’s murder,
and he was taken into custody the following month. On the evening of the shooting,
the 2 men had allegedly gotten into a drunken argument in the kitchen that ultimately
escalated into a physical fight. The altercation culminated with Kozhara retrieving his weapon
from the bedroom before returning to gun his friend down. If convicted of his murder charge,
Kozhara reportedly faced the possibility of spending up to 15 years behind bars.
#2 - Michael Davis
In the early hours of June the 23rd of 2021, an Arkansas teen was gunned down by a Lonoke County
sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop in the city of Cabot. It later emerged that the victim,
17-year-old Hunter Brittain, had been test driving his truck after making repairs on its transmission
when the officer, Sergeant Michael Davis, pulled him over near a body shop. A subsequent arrest
affidavit detailed how, upon parking his vehicle on the side of the road, Brittain got out and
moved toward the bed of his truck, which had begun to roll backward toward Davis’ patrol
car. Believing Brittain to have been retrieving a weapon, the officer immediately brandished his
service weapon and fired a single round into the young man’s neck. Davis placed Brittain’s
passenger under arrest while the motorist himself was transported to North Little Rock Hospital,
where he ultimately succumbed to his gunshot wound. During the ensuing homicide investigation,
detectives learned that Davis’ body cam had only been turned on after Brittain had been shot. It
was determined that, when the fatal round was fired, the victim hadn’t been reaching
for a weapon, as Davis believed, but for a jug of antifreeze, which he’d intended to use to stop the
truck from rolling backwards. Although the officer claimed to have given Brittain “several commands”
to get back inside his vehicle, the victim’s passenger testified that he’d heard no such
directives prior to the gunshot. In March of 2022, Davis was found guilty of negligent homicide, but
not guilty of manslaughter and was consequently sentenced to 1 year in jail plus a $1,000 fine.
#1 - Hideaki Kumazawa
A former top Japanese government official was taken into police custody on June the
1st of 2019 on suspicion of murdering his own son. The 76-year-old suspect,
retired agricultural vice minister Hideaki Kumazawa, told investigators that his son,
Eiichiro, had moved back in with his parents about a month prior to his death. Kumazawa
further detailed how the family began regularly having tense arguments with one another following
44-year-old Eiichiro’s arrival. The latter, who reportedly suffered from a developmental disorder,
was accused of physically and verbally abusing his father during the brief period in which they
lived together. Kumazawa told the police that, on the day of the fatal incident,
his son had become enraged at the noise generated by the attendees of an athletic event being
held at a nearby elementary school. Allegedly concerned that Eiichiro might try to cause some
sort of harm to him or the others, Kumazawa grabbed hold of a knife and stabbed his son
multiple times. The victim ultimately passed away due to massive blood loss. In December of 2019,
reportedly taking into account that Kumazawa had suffered previous violent assaults at the hands
of the victim, the Tokyo District Court sentenced the former public official to 6 years behind bars.
Thanks for watching! Would you rather be forced to serve as POTUS for an entire week or have to
type a 10-page thesis with baseball gloves on your hands? Let us know in the comments section below!