Comments on: Rogue Philly Narcotics Squad Terrorizing Immigrant Grocers

By: To Serve and Protect (Themselves) « scattershot

To Serve and Protect (Themselves) « scattershot — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:56:46 +0000

[...] Mayor Nutter, you do employ criminals, and plenty of them. Posted by Joe Filed in police Tags: budget cuts, Michael Nutter, [...]

By: lori

lori — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 01:25:03 +0000

these cops were caught by a back up camera doing their crimes. yet no one has been prosecuted. lynn abraham didn’t believe in arresting and prosecuting cops. juries here don’t and from d.a. seth williams recent
track record they won’t be.

By: Windy

Windy — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 06:53:42 +0000

Philly isn’t the only city with problem cops:
Cop walks as child wronged
http://neighbors.denverpost.com/viewtopic.php?p=721210&postvote=up&no_increase_views=1&postvoteorder=1#p721210

By: Pat

Pat — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 04:08:06 +0000

#44 | Aresen:

That is dead on target. Its exactly what would happen.

The only solution is for people to hold prosecutors accountable to prosecute police as aggressively as they do everyone else. But most prosecutors are too close to their local departments and fear a backlash that would hinder prosecutions if they try to hold police accountable. One local prosecutor in my area will simply not handle police wrongdoing cases. He hands them all to the state attorney general who has to work from a physical distance and without any inside the department help or resources. Prosecutions, on the rare occasion that they happen, are always watered down and almost beyond statue of limitations requirements.

The one thing that I have seen really scare police out of their fecklessness are civilian review boards. Cops piss themselves at the mention of installing one in a community. Just the mention is often enough to stop any really egregious abusers. Internal peer pressures from other cops, who don’t want their own crap to get in front of unpredictable civilians, is a powerful motivator.

By: Aresen

Aresen — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 02:24:24 +0000

Marlo:

I think that would create an even stronger incentive to remain part of the Blue Wall of Silence.

The cops would blame the one who brought the matter to light, not the one who did the wrong.

Historically, whistleblowers are seen as traitors.

By: Mario

Mario — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 11:48:09 +0000

“Until ALL police feel the ramifications of the ‘bad apples’, there won’t be change.” (#36 – Boyd Durkin)

This is a good point. My understanding is that in army boot camp, if one solider screws up (makes his bed incorrectly, or fails to clean his gun properly), his fellow soldiers are also punished. I don’t know if I have this right or not, but if it’s true, maybe it’s time to expand this kind of discipline to police — at least to departments, or at the very least precincts, where violations have been confirmed. Punish all of the cops — they’ll soon police each other.

This is the one bit of militarization of our police that I could get behind.

By: Eric Hart

Eric Hart — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 23:47:46 +0000

Philadelphia is a special kind of crazy. I lived there for a year, and the kind of corruption and thuggery that exists in all areas of life there are unmatched with any other city I’ve lived in.

By: supercat

supercat — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:22:36 +0000

Sounds like those LEOs like to play cops and robbers. And lucky them–they don’t have to pick sides: they can be cops AND robbers.

By: Marty

Marty — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:50:36 +0000

Jim Bell is a man with a solution for govt abuse! he’s sitting in prison right now for his trouble, I believe…

give an MIT engineer an anarcho-capitalistic-militant attitude and you get the jim bell assassination system. I can’t confirm if it’s ever been successfully used.

By: Steve Verdon

Steve Verdon — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:21:20 +0000

Cynical, I don't know.

By: ChrisD

ChrisD — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:49:51 +0000

When sending my kid to day care, I wanted tiny little disposable bags to send his food in, but could not find any. Even after specifically asking at Target for “crack size” bags, they did not appear to know what I was talking about (this was in the burbs). It’s annoying/wasteful I have to send a single cookie in a bag only marginally smaller than one for sandwiches.

By: Boyd Durkin

Boyd Durkin — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:40:01 +0000

#33 Matt,
Reading your quote I am reminded of advice I gave a lefty friend last week. I told him to learn current definitions for “state of emergency”, “martial law”, and “relocation camps” just in case (by this I mean highly likely) we start using them here in USA in the next few years (for the good of the chillren).

By: Boyd Durkin

Boyd Durkin — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:32:48 +0000

#27 JD makes the brilliant point of the day. Until ALL police feel the ramifications of the “bad apples”, there won’t be change.

ALL police are guilty of allowing bad police to exist. We cannot allow them off the hook. We also need to throw badge-licking journalists and vote-whoring politicians into the pain-party as well.

By: Pat

Pat — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:45:26 +0000

#33 | Matt:

Philly police are better armed and more aggressive than the KGB ever was. Plus they get to hide behind the constitution that was originally created to protect us from excessive police.

As Philadelphia Police Commissioner at the time of the MOVE confrontation, Gregore Sambor, shouted over the bull horn prior to unleashing 10,000 rounds into the row home on Osage Ave.,

“MOVE, this is America, come out with your hands up”.

I repeat for emphasis, “… this is America, come out with your hands up”.

Sage advise to all Americans confronted by their peace officer forces.

By: Kayak2U Blog » Blog Archive » Criminal gangs roaming south Philadelphia

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:39:00 +0000

[...] Radley Balko has the story of "rogue" police squads terrorizing immigrant shop keepers. [...]

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:54:30 +0000

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur – what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!”

– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

By: claude

claude — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:49:15 +0000

I just read this story over at policeone.com. Only one comment so far over there, but its a doozy.

http://www.policeone.com/legal/articles/1798823-Shopkeepers-claim-plainclothes-cops-looted-stores/

By: Dave Krueger

Dave Krueger — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:45:07 +0000

I didn’t read the story all the way through, but destroying a video camera should be obstruction of justice punishable with a long jail sentence (especially when the perp is a cop). I also believe that should be the case when cops try to confiscate personal cameras, force people to delete the pictures, or intimidate people into not filming them.

By: David

David — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:33:05 +0000

Ugh. When I lived in Philadelphia, the store I went to most was a corner grocery owned by an incredibly nice older Vietnamese couple. I hope they weren’t among this son-of-a-bitch’s victims.

By: claude

claude — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:22:17 +0000

“Rogue Philly Narcotics Squad”

A bit “redundant”.