… it was my dad who got the ticket for going thru on a red
… even the court sided with cop

Police Integrity is an oxymoron.

This story is appearing here late because I only recently thought to send it along to Balko as I was reading a recent post of his. After the incident, my attorney and I wrote a letter to the DA, Leon Cannizaro, asking him to investigate the matter. His office wrote back declining to investigate, saying the matter would more appropriately be handled by the Public Integrity Bureau (which investigates police misconduct, but is run by the NOPD, not an independent commission).

I was strongly dissuaded from filing a complaint with the PIB by my attorney, Sam Dalton. Sam, who is the most experienced civil rights lawyer in Louisiana, told me that there was no way the PIB would discipline the officer and that they often treated complainants very shabbily.

However, Rich Webster of City Business Journal wrote the above article which led to the PIB very politely taking my complaint. I was told that the investigation would take up to a month to complete. In the intervening time, my seat belt ticket was thrown out before trial (the ADA issued a “nole prosequi”). But, after a month I did not receive the promised report on the outcome of the investigation.

I spent several days on the phone, getting the run around from various PIB and NOPD members. However, at one point I got to speak with the officer who actually performed the investigation. He told me that the cop (Torres) told a different story than mine and that his recommendation was to find the complaint “false” (or some thing equivalent to “false”- he could have recommended a finding of “unsupported” which would have meant there just wasn’t enough evidence to find the claim “supported). The investigator also told me that if he were the officer in question, he might well have arrested me for interfering with investigation/arrest of the pedestrian (I want to say here that I never got closer than 7 or 8 ft from the officer when he was holding the pedestrian).

I still haven’t received a report on the final PIB police findings, so I don’t know what the final outcome was. I think it’s safe to assume that- if they bothered to finish processing it at all- they dismissed the complaint.

Thanks to Mr. Balko for the thoughtful post and to the commentators for the overwhelming support here. And, thanks for the many nice comments about my testicles. However, it really wasn’t as “ballsy” as you might think. It happened in broad daylight with plenty of potential witnesses around. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have gotten out of my car. And when the cop started threatening me, I shut up and handed over my license and registration instead of risking going to jail (and worse) with any further provocation.

I have added the QIK application to my phone, after Balko alluded to it in a recent post. I wish I had it that day to make a record of the officer’s misconduct. Hopefully, apps like QIK will allow folks to better protect themselves and others from police abuse in the future.

If the NOLA police department wants to encourage confidence, you would expect that this would be handled by now.

Ideally you want a camera phone so you can email the incriminating photographs before the cop seizes (i.e. destroys) the evidence of what he has done.

I would like to see legislation explicitly requiring that in circumstances where cops are required to have probable cause or articulable suspicion in order to do something, they must make reasonable effort to demonstrate it. I would also like to see legislation explicitly stating that any citizen interaction with police officers shall be presumed to be coerced if the cop is in a position to make the citizen’s life more or less miserable.

And he’s a fan of the Libertarian Party!

With friends like that, who needs enemies!

Cop was just doing his job, arresting the pedestrian he hit with his car. That’s just how it goes. Thanks, Porky Gallagher.

However, in terms of actual length, most of the article covers how complaints MIGHT be adverse to a cop’s record, and how police should be nice. This is only tangentially relevant, and is placed in so as to split the narrative of the main issue. Its bad writing, UNLESS you want to weaken the narrative.

So, to the journalists who wrote the article, are you trying to soft-pedal the story, or are you just poor writers?

But in some sense, New Orleans isn’t a badly-off American city. It’s more like it’s a very well of Central American city.

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:5_-Fl9VSjzMJ:www.facebook.com/people/William-Torres/621824189+William+Torres+new+orleans+police&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us