Three items from just the last week:

1. Remember the off-duty cop in Alexandria, VA who shot and killed a teenager over an unpaid $26 IHOP tab? There will be no criminal charges against the cop.

2. Remember the off-duty cop who broke into a civilian home, abused and threatened the occupants, put his gun into one of the occupants’ mouth, then when someone threatened to call the police, replied, “I am the fucking police?” All because he thought someone threw a rock at his car?

Reader George Ertel writes:

A few weeks ago you reported on Michael Adams, a cop on trial for breaking into a house in PA and assaulting the occupants who, he believed, had earlier damaged his car. You linked to the story in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. No follow-up story appeared, so I emailed the DA, John Peck, in Westmorland County. He was kind enough to give me a call.

Not guilty. The jury deliberated for 8 hours over two days, so at least someone wanted him guilty. Peck had believed that there was a good chance for conviction, as the 20-year-olds attacked were middle class and the neighbors were solid middle class and good witnesses. It was clear Adams lied on the stand — he claimed to just come across the car that had stoned his, yet the house where it was parked was on a cul-de-sac in an area where he had no business being. It’s hard to convict a cop, Peck said.

I told him I appreciated him taking the case to trial.

Emphasis mine.

3. My Cato colleague Tim Lynch details the horrifying case of Frank Jude, beaten nearly to death by a mob of off-duty cops at a party. The pictures are awful. Here’s what the guy looks like. And here’s what he looked like after the beating. When bystanders called the cops to report the beating, the uniformed officers who arrived joined in the beating, then arrested Jude for resisting arrest. Eventually, witnesses went to the media, the truth came out, and all charges against Jude were dropped.

But last April, the cops were acquitted of all criminal wrongdoing, in part, the jury said, because a “poor investigation” didn’t make it clear which cops were at fault. That’s convenient. Guess who conducted the investigation? Criminal charges against the cops who did it stalled for months, apparently because no cops at the party would come forward to name who was involved in the beating.

Where, exactly, are the internal procedures and oversight, here?

The fact that no one’s in jail for causing the damage in that picture of Jude is blood-churning. Jude is now suing for $30 million.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 21st, 2006 at 12:39 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.