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Luke Weiland was driving his sons and their friend to baseball practice when he was pulled over by a police officer who inexplicably held Weiland and the three children at gunpoint, shouting bizarre orders at them before eventually letting them go with minor citations. Weiland has now sued the police arguing that the officers used excessive force and unreasonably detained him.

The ordeal started on January 29, 2023, when Weilandan attorney in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsinwas driving his two sons, ages 14 and 12, and their 12-year-old friend to baseball practice in a nearby town. According to the suit, around 9:20 am, Weiland noticed a police cruiser behind him with his emergency lights on. Believing the cruiser to be trying to pass him, Weiland pulled along the shoulder of the road to allow the officer to pass. However, after a few minutes, Weiland realized the officer was trying to pull him over, so he turned onto the shoulder of a side road.

However, instead of a typical stop, Officer Rodney Krakow opened the door of his cruiser and began yelling for Weiland to put his keys on the roof of the car and for everyone inside the car to keep their hands on the ceiling of the vehicle.

“Officer Krakow was acting erratically, yelling, and shouting demands that made no sense,” the complaint reads. “His behavior was concerning to everyone in the Weiland truck to the point that they thought something might be wrong with the officer to be behaving in this manner.”

Soon after, a second officer, Douglas Van Berkel, arrived and both began pointing their guns at Weiland’s car. Krakow demanded that Weiland get out of his vehicle and kneel on the ground. At this point, it was only five degrees outside. As Weiland complied, holding his driver’s license and registration, Krakow grabbed the paperwork and threw it on the ground without looking at it.

Krakow handcuffed Weiland, while Van Berkel kept his gun pointed at Weiland. At this point, Krakow asked who the car’s passengers were, and Weiland told him they were his two sons and their friend. Eventually, after a third officer arrived, the officers picked up Weiland’s discarded ID and realized that Weiland was an attorney who was family friends with the local sheriff. According to the complaint, one of the officers even remarked that “he knew Weiland and his family and that they (the officers) would be alright.”

Eventually, Weiland asked what was going on, and Krakow told him that the incident was being treated as a “high risk vehicle stop” because Weiland didn’t immediately pull over.

“This whole ordeal right here with pulling your guns out on me is fucking ridiculous,” body camera footage shows Weiland telling Krakow.

Eventually, Weiland was released and given citations for speeding and resisting/fleeing a scene, though those citations were eventually dropped.

Weiland’s suit, which was filed last week, claims that the officers violated Weiland’s “rights to be free from unreasonable seizures when they detained the Plaintiffs at the scene for substantially longer than was necessary to accomplish the original purposes of the traffic stop” and that the officers used “excessive force by pointing their guns at” Weiland and the children.

Unfortunately, this is far from the first time police officers have held innocent peopleincluding kidsat gunpoint during a routine traffic stop.

In 2020, police in Aurora, Colorado, forced an innocent familyincluding a 6-year-old girlto lie facedown on the pavement at gunpoint after allegedly mistaking their car for a stolen motorcycle. In 2022, two elderly Texas residents filed a lawsuit alleging that a police officer violently arrested them and held them at gunpoint during a traffic stop. And just last year, Texas police apologized over a strikingly similar “high-risk traffic stop” that led police to hold an Arkansas family at gunpoint.

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Elon Musk steps up attacks on Trump once again – as the president fights back

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Elon Musk steps up attacks on Trump once again - as the president fights back

Elon Musk has stepped up his attacks on Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill – weeks after a spectacular fallout between the world’s richest man and the US president.

Following weeks of relative silence after clashing with Mr Trump over his “big beautiful bill”, the billionaire vowed to unseat politicians who support it.

In a post on X, Musk said those who had campaigned on cutting spending but then backed the bill “should hang their heads in shame”.

He added: “And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”

Musk also threatened to put their faces on a poster which said “liar” and “voted to increase America’s debt” by $5trn (£3.6trn).

The posts attracted a swift reply from Mr Trump, who claimed the billionaire “may get more subsidy than any human being in history” for his electric car business.

“Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” he wrote on Truth Social.

“No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!”

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Elon’s dad on the Musk-Trump bust-up

Musk spent at least $250m (£182m) supporting Mr Trump in his presidential campaign and then led the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which sacked about 120,000 federal employees.

He has argued the legislation would greatly increase the US national debt and wipe out the savings he claimed he achieved through DOGE.

As the Senate discussed the package, Musk called it “utterly insane and destructive”.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said the bill’s massive spending indicated “we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!”

“Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people,” he wrote.

Read more from Sky News:
Stab victim describes horrible reality of knife crime
Royal train to be scrapped with family to rely on helicopters

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Musk previously said some of his social media posts during his dramatic fallout with Mr Trump “went too far”.

He had shared a series of posts on X, including one that described Mr Trump’s tax and spending bill as a “disgusting abomination”.

He also claimed, in a since-deleted post, that the president appeared in files relating to the disgraced paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

But Musk later wrote: “I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far.”

In response, the president told the New York Post: “I thought it was very nice that he did that.”

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What’s in Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’?

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What's in Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill'?

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Martha Kelner and Mark Stone break down what’s in Donald Trump’s huge tax and spending bill. He’s trying to sign it into law by the end of the week.

They also discuss the State Department’s decision to revoke US visas for British band Bob Vylan after their Glastonbury performance.

If you’ve got a question you’d like the Trump100 team to answer, you can email it to trump100@sky.uk.

You can also watch all episodes on our YouTube channel.

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Major German bank to offer crypto trading by 2026 amid bank ‘FOMO’

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Major German bank to offer crypto trading by 2026 amid bank ‘FOMO’

Major German bank to offer crypto trading by 2026 amid bank ‘FOMO’

Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe execs once ruled out adopting crypto over concerns of volatility and risk, and the banking giant also blocked customer crypto transactions back in 2015.

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