hile most police are pretty good guys (and girls) they are also well-known for their violent and criminal tendencies, and in the course of their very difficult jobs, they often tend to do bad things to bad people.  We don't hear so much about that; it's when they happen to slap around some white kid with a rich daddy that it makes the news, and 90% of the black and brown people in America watch that news report and slap their foreheads at the amazing ability of white people to be so clueless and to think cops giving some "stick time" or a stray bullet to a suspect is something new and shocking.

Much like plane crashes, stories of cops doing what they're supposed to do seldom make the news.  But when something goes wrong, it's always in the news.  It's not fair, but it's life, and one (or a few) bad apples will always ruin the whole barrel. Police misconduct stories are always juicy, and something I frequently enjoy blogging about.

The most recent stories are added on top of this page.

January 23, 2004

Just how appalled you are by this depends a lot on how you feel about Jesus.  Personally, even if I were a Christian, I'd be pretty damn outraged at convicted murders getting to live in this sort of luxury.  Come on, what is this, a progressive Western democracy where even prisoners have some privacy and right to a reasonable quality of life? Of course not, since in America prisoners are evil and we all know what Dubya says about evil and how there aren't any shades of gray and once you hold to that truth you realize how foolish it would be to give prisoners any job training or rehabilitation in the hopes that when they get out of jail they won't immediately return to crime out of economic necessity.

Anyway, back to the news item I'm pretending outrage about:

Most inmates at Iowa's Newton Correctional Facility live three to a cell and have no privacy, even when they use the toilet. But if they agree to immerse themselves in Bible study and "the transforming love of Jesus Christ," according to two lawsuits filed yesterday, they are given keys to their cell doors, private bathrooms, free phone calls -- even access to big-screen TVs.

According to the suits, about 200 Iowa prisoners pray and memorize Bible verses under the guidance of Christian staff in prison rooms lined with displays of scripture passages. In return, they live in an "honor" unit where they are housed two to a cell, permitted to leave their cells at night and granted many other privileges.

The program is funded, in part, with revenue from phone charges on the general inmate population. Iowa Department of Corrections spokesman Fred Scaletta said, "No state dollars, including telephone monies, are used in the religious component of the program." But the lawsuits contend that it is impossible to separate the religious and secular portions of a program that describes itself as "Christ-centered" 24 hours a day.

The suits also say the privileges given to InnerChange participants amount to incentives to convert to fundamentalist Christianity.

I don't personally have any problem with "faith-based initiatives" or charities.  I don't really support them, but if the security blanket of Christianity (or Islam, or Buddhism, or Wicca, or whatever...) helps people live better lives or keep from going right back to prison or whatever, then goody for society.  If that lurking scumbag on the corner doesn't try to kill me because he's afraid he'll be punished in hell or he just knows it's wrong or he doesn't want to be reincarnated as a snail, it's all pretty much the same to me.  Just so long as he behaves.

The problem with this instance is the blatant way it promotes one religion, and provides special treatment for guys who do it, while giving no real benefit.  It's not like they have to say they're down with Jesus in order to get better job training or a GED or something; they just do it to get better accommodations and treatment, for the price of several hours a day wasted pretending to read the bible. It's hard to imagine why everyone in the prison isn't going for this program, given the benefits.  I'd think the hardcore Nation of Islam guys would march over and demand to be let in, since after all, Jehovah is their god too.

And they really want to watch the Superbowl on the big screen.

December 20, 2003

Hundreds of videotapes that federal prison officials had claimed were destroyed show that foreign nationals held at a New York detention facility after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were victims of physical and verbal abuse by guards, the Justice Department's inspector general said yesterday.

An investigation by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine also found that officials at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, N.Y., which is run by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, improperly taped meetings between detainees and their lawyers, and used excessive strip searches and restraints to punish those in confinement.

The report concluded that as many as 20 guards were involved in the abuse, which included slamming prisoners against walls and painfully twisting their arms and hands. Fine recommended discipline for 10 employees and counseling for two others who remain employed by the federal prison system. He also said the government should notify the employers of four former guards about their conduct.

A federal dragnet after the Sept. 11 attacks resulted in the detention of more than 1,200 foreign nationals, including 762 people who were the focus of Fine's original probe. Most were of Arab or South Asian descent and were held on immigration violations under a directive from Attorney General John D. Ashcroft while authorities attempted to determine whether they were connected to the attack or to terrorist groups. None was ever charged with terrorism-related crimes, however."

April 5, 2003

Tulia Texas sees justice at last.

Conceding that they had made a catastrophic mistake in relying solely on the uncorroborated testimony of an undercover officer, prosecutors moved today to overturn the convictions of 38 people, almost all of them black, who were caught in a series of drug arrests in 1999 that tore this town apart.

A judge agreed with the prosecutors, and defense lawyers, that the Texas courts should vacate every conviction arising from the drug sting, including those in which the defendants pleaded guilty.

I don't want to get into the whole topic, but it's been one of the great festering travesties of justice in the US in the last 10 years. Just briefly, this weird cop with a history of mental issues set up shop in Tulia, Texas, and based solely on his very suspect testimony, juries convicted like 10% of the town's black residents of being massive drug dealers.

The cop's reports were amazingly stupid and should have raised red flags for miles, but the racist cop and prosecutor and white people who made up most of the juries combined with incompetent defense attorneys, and as a result dozens of black people got very long prison sentences when they almost certainly had nothing to do with any of the crimes the weird cop said they were guilty of. Try to find the irregularities in this quote. Mr. Coleman is the weird cop.

Mr. Coleman testified last month that although most of the supposed drug transactions were in public places, he did not wear a recording device, arrange for video surveillance, ask anyone to accompany him, ask anyone to observe the deals or fingerprint the plastic bags containing the drugs. He worked alone and did not tape record his drug buys. No drugs, weapons or large sums of cash were found when 46 people, more than 10 percent of Tulia's black population, were arrested early in the morning on July 23, 1999.

So basically Coleman said he bought drugs from all of these people, he provided drugs that he said were the ones he bought, and with no other evidence than that and his testimony, they put that many people into prison, most of them with 20 year or longer sentences. Kind of defines "travesty of justice", eh?

January 11, 2003

Several news items featuring Stupid Cop Tricks caught my eye yesterday, so I'll just post them all here, grouped thematically.  I'd write more, but the bed is calling me with a bullhorn.

• Pretty good story of scandal and police corruption from Dallas, where there's word of hundreds of arrests for the felony crime of selling minced sheetrock, chalk, and various other forms of white dust.  The cops claimed they were cocaine and meth, and arrested and imprisoned hundreds of people with this planted evidence.  Most of them are being released now, and a deluge of lawsuits is pretty much inevitable.

Clearly there weren't hundreds of so-called drug dealers walking around with bags of chalk dust, just waiting for the cops to bust them and seize it as evidence.  Therefore the evidence must have been planted, and if it's all found to be from the same source, then obviously the cops and/or the NARC who ratted on the arrested guys planted the evidence either before or after the arrest.  It's not just a small amount of the stuff either.

"Of less than 1,500 pounds of cocaine that the cops reportedly seized in 2001, we now know that almost 700 pounds was Sheetrock or pool chalk. Is that how a major police department deals with the drug problem?"

The NARC was obviously doing pretty well for himself, turning pennies of ground dust into heavy police pay offs/rewards.

By mid-2000, Mr. Alonso had become the department's most prolific snitch, according to police and court records. He was instrumental in about 70 arrests and the confiscation of huge amounts of purported cocaine and methamphetamines.

For this effort, police records indicate, he received 60 payments, totaling nearly $200,000. Chief Bolton's salary in 2001 was $152,000, including about $20,000 in overtime.

• Talk about stupid cop tricks.  Female undercover cop busts into a 7/11, waving a gun, wearing a ski mask, to try to arrest a guy who sold her a $20 rock of crack.  Store clerk sees her, she's got no police ID, he thinks he's about to be murdered in an armed robbery, so he shoots her.  She's very lucky to be alive, since she wasn't wearing a vest, and the guy was a good shot.  If I were working night clerk in such a store and someone came in waving a gun and wearing a mask, I sure as hell wouldn't shoot them just once.  Until they resemble a dropped tub of salsa, I'm assuming they're about to pull another gun.  They'd be deader than roadkill before I stopped pulling the trigger.

Nguyen said he had no clue that he had shot an officer until his father called 911 and dispatchers indicated that police were already there. "In my mind, I'm thinking, 'How can this be?' " Nguyen said. "I heard from outside a voice saying, 'Officer down.' That's when I realized it."

Soon after, officers stormed into the store.

"They were yelling and cussing," the owner said. "I just put my hands up. I tell my son, 'You put your hands up and do whatever they say.' " Nguyen, his father and the customer whom police were attempting to arrest when the shooting occurred, were ordered on the floor and were handcuffed.

I like that the crack dealer was still there.  You'd think he'd get the hell out of Dodge when shots started flying.

Police acknowledged Friday that an undercover officer was masked and brandishing a gun when she was shot by a store clerk who believed that he was about to be robbed.

Hernandez said undercover officers typically wear pull-on masks "to conceal their identity because they may be a 'buy' officer one day and they don't want to be recognized."

• An even stupider cop trick here, where a Detroit cop cut off a woman's finger while trying to handcuff her. The story sounds really bad.  Plain clothes cops basically beat up the woman and drag her out of her car, when she's waiting in a parking lot for some friends.  Can you say, "probable cause"?  Me either.  They start trying to handcuff her and she's got on a big jacket, so one cop is trying to cut off the sleeve to get the cuffs on, and she's struggling, and he severs most of her ring finger.  Which was recovered on the scene, but could not be reattached.  Hope she wasn't a typist.

Cmdr. Ralph Godbee Jr. said only that internal affairs was investigating the officer's behavior during the incident, which happened about 2:30 a.m. Sunday. Though the department does not issue knives, many officers carry them for, among other things, cutting seat belts to free accident victims.

• And finally, some Tennessee dep'ty dogs blow away a family's dog while they have the family handcuffed and kneeling on the side of the highway.  With video that's guaranteed to depress you.

December 23, 2002

How not to support your drug habit if you are a policeman.

The arrest was part of a case opened Sunday night, when Ptl. Amalio S. Gurcsik of Washington Township was arrested in the parking lot of a Cherry Hill pizzeria, off duty but in his patrol car, allegedly trying to buy two bags of powdered cocaine from a Camden County Prosecutor's Office undercover officer.

That would have to be pretty surreal if you were a drug dealer, and not an undercover cop. When you see a police car driving up, don't you run?  Or stuff the drugs in your underwear and try to look innocent?  And then how does the cop convince you he really wants to buy it?  I mean you're probably attuned to looking out for undercover cops buying, but what do you do when the guy gets out of a cop car, and is in uniform, and wants to buy some?  You might as well walk down to the station and turn yourself in.

The whole thing is pretty pathetic.  What happened to just skimming some off of the evidence room?  Or just arresting the dealer and then taking his stuff and letting him go as a warning?  You'd like to think a junkie cop would be a bit more proactive.

The really ironic part is that after this one guy got busted, they caught another cop in the same department with cocaine in his urine sample.  And not just any cop, the one who has been working as the DARE officer.  DARE is an anti-drug use program the police teach in schools in the US, one that's had a lot of controversy since most studies show it makes no difference at all in the drug use of kids who go through it. Still, it looks pretty bad when the DARE cop is snorting coke.

November 24, 2002

Great news item about a homeless/squatter riot in Germany, with cops beating anyone they could catch.  Including two undercover officers.

German police officers have mistakenly beaten up two of their own undercover detectives, leaving the authorities facing an embarrassing lawsuit. The incident happened on Saturday 16 November in Hamburg, when police officers were monitoring a rally of some 3,000 people protesting against the demolition of illegal squatters' homes.

Two plain-clothes agents infiltrated the crowd to send information to their colleagues. But late in the evening violence broke out and several hundred helmet-clad riot police clashed with the protesters - including the undercover detectives.

A spokesman for the two plain-clothes agents said that even though they had given their fellow officers a secret password, they were still beaten up. Both officers suffered head injuries from the incident and they are now taking legal action.

The local police union described the incident as regrettable, and said it was in no way "evidence of more widespread aggression within the police force".

That last line is the best; how they immediately volunteer the information that there's certainly no problem with police brutality, despite any evidence to the contrary. Usually you can just say the hippy punks you had to beat were throwing stones, or tried to knife you, or whatever.  It's a bit harder to trot out that explanation when it's undercover cops you are beating.  Perhaps the undercover officers were Manchurian Candidate'd and had joined with the protesters?  Yeah, that's it.

November 15, 2002

You might not want to make any funny moves around Miami police.  This article details their long history of crazy cowboy antics, none of which have had any serious departmental review or punishment for cops who have shot dozen of people in the back, killed unarmed criminals, planted guns on dead men, and much more.

On June 19, 1993, officers Kelvin Harris and Clifford Gibson fired at least 19 times, killing 17-year-old bystander Laurence Johnson. It is one of the department's most perplexing unsolved cases. To this day, investigators say they cannot determine which officer fired the deadly shot. Both went undisciplined and returned to work.

Harris has never given an official statement to homicide investigators.

Both were on plainclothes duty when they were sent to investigate reports that a group of young men was firing shots into the air. Gibson said he exchanged gunfire with a suspect. Harris said an armed man charged him with a gun.

In the end, one suspect was shot in the hand and the bystander, Johnson, was shot in the back. Neither was armed.

August 23, 2002

I post about police misconduct from time to time, but this story is just so outrageous I almost want to skip it.  Probably the best "cops are stupid" news item to date. It's from Houston, and the cops there set up a raid on a local teen hangout where there was often street racing.  For whatever reason, perhaps they've watched The Fast and the Furious too many times, cops have decided that they must crack down on this now.

The problem is that when the 50 cops descended on the Sonic Burger and K-mart next door, where all of the teens and young adults were hanging out, they didn't find any street racing going on.  So they left, right? Nope, they arrested every single person there.  Really. 

The operation had been weeks in planning and involved dozens of officers. But officers involved said that when no drag racers were found, they were ordered to arrest the 278 people there.

"I couldn't believe we were being told to arrest all those kids. It was just utterly, utterly senseless," said one officer involved, who violated department policy by discussing the arrests and spoke on condition of anonymity.

They were mostly arrested for criminal trespass, which is sort of astounding when you consider that the Sonic was still open!  So people were in a place of business, buying food, and were arrested for it.  The kids arrested, most of them had their cars towed away, with impound and towing fees of hundreds of dollars to get them back.

HPD's internal affairs division was flooded Monday with people filing complaints over their arrests.

"I was eating ice cream from the Sonic when I was arrested," 19-year-old Emily Demmler said Monday. She and several friends, all of whom were arrested, met at Demmler's house Monday to go file IAD complaints.

An IAD officer said many of those who filed complaints Monday were discussing lawsuits over the incident.

It's like something you'd hear from China, Tiananmen Square all over again. The main difference being that when it happens here it's a rare exception, there is legal recourse to take, justice may be sought in the courts, and there is a free press to report about it. And no one is beaten to death by savage army cops, or run over by a tank.

March 19, 2002

Amusingly sad article here, about a woman who was drunk, took a cab home, the cab got pulled over for speeding, and apparently she was mouthing off, so the cops arrested her for being drunk.  Even though she wasn't driving!  They took her to some sort of detox center and they wouldn't let her make a phone call or use her cell phone to call her husband, so she started making a fuss and they took her to jail.  Still not letting her make a call.  Finally her husband found her the next morning after calling everywhere all night, thinking she'd been kidnapped or in an accident or anything.  She's now suing.

End of the article you discover that she's British, which I'm sure is a major factor in the whole thing.

I.E. she's from a country where the cops are generally rational people who you can discuss things with, and if you scream at them they won't just ignore all of your rights and lock you up overnight.

Remember that cops are people too, usually not very bright ones.  They like to be in power, they like to carry around guns and handcuffs and they like to tell people what to do.  That's why they took such low-paying, high stress, difficult jobs.  Lots of them want to be soldiers but they don't want that so badly that they'll suffer the really low pay and really horrible lifestyle that requires.

Some very small percent of cops are nice people who want to help society.  Most are grown up bullies who want to help society, and fuck with assholes at the same time.  The point is, don't be an asshole to cops, they aren't bright enough to take it, they don't have an attitude to take it, and they don't have any reason to take it.  They can screw you over without even trying.  Say "yes sir" a lot and you'll be okay.  Go home and beat your dog if it frustrates you so.  Worst comes to worst, you'll get animal control, and they are much less dangerous.

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.