Sunday, October 25th, 2009
Tip of the hat to the InjusticeNews Twitter feed for several of these stories.
West Virginia police officer gets two years in prison on federal civil rights charges. His local department had failed to fire him after more than 20 complaints of false charges, racial discrimination, and excessive force.
Police stop San Bernardino, California man on his Harley, arrest him, and detain him for more than two days without ever processing him. The beating was captured on video.
Minneapolis officers in a SWAT van pull over Mercedes driven by a black man. An altercation ensues. Police report dramatically differs from the stop captured on video. City settles for $100,000. Internal affairs won’t say if any of the officers were investigated.
Chicago police plan benefit to raise legal funds for cop who killed two people while driving drunk, then walked away from the accident.
Georgia cop caught exposing himself to a woman during a traffic stop. His department gives him the option of resigning instead of being fired, which allows him to then find work at another police department. You can probably guess what happened next.
The police officer who shot and nearly killed an unarmed Grand Valley State student during a pot bust last year is back on the job. His squad car was apparently stolen earlier this month.
Indiana police chief suspended for refusing to turn over results of an internal investigation to the city council.
Montana doctor wins default judgment against police department after he was arrested for refusing to leave the side of a suicidal woman. The default judgment is the result of someone in the department deleting dash cam video of the event. Apparently, video of other questionable police encounters had been deleted as well.
This entry was posted
on Sunday, October 25th, 2009 at 12:04 pm by Radley Balko
and is filed under Police Professionalism.
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TheAgitator.com
It bugs me that we don’t see 60minutes or another news program doing a story on the lack of police accountability. The material is already there.
re: the Montana case
the police destroyed the video. the video was evidence. how is that not criminal? i watch TV, i’ve heard the phrase “obstruction of justice”, i’ve heard of “tampering with evidence”.
wtf? i mean, c’mon, WTF?
Whenever the cops enact a new policy of video taping police activities, they always (and I mean always) proclaim that it will benefit both the public and the cops. At first, I didn’t understand why they thought it would benefit the cops since it would almost certainly expose even more embarrassing cases of police misconduct.
Then it occurred to me. I am such a fuckin’ idiot. Of course it won’t result in more embarrassing video. They just erase that stuff.
Cops would never agree to video taping their activities if they thought it would get them in trouble (just as the medical industry would never agree to health care reform if they thought it would reduce their income).
Cops can’t obstruct justice. Cops are justice.
Whenever I see a headline or link that says “Police beating caught on tape,” I always click on it. Mainly in hopes that it will be the cops who are taking the beating. The other way around would just be another isolated incident.
Sure can’t wait for a day when you need the cops Radley, you’ll realize that their job is a lot harder than just sitting around, farting, and posting on a blog.
Are they sure they have the right picture of the Georgia cop who exposed himself? He looks more like a gang-banger than a police officer. Oh wait, he IS a member of a criminal gang!
Police professionalism roundups on your site always depress me.
I thought it was very funny that the police officer who exposed himself worked at at Bible College.
Radley, not sure if you previously saw this one, but in Chicago, 4 cops cost the taxpayers $1.5 million (I almost said “cost the city”…).
Apparently one of them didn’t want to pay a $50 parking ticket – you can guess the rest.
http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/parking-ticket-geek/2009/10/the-most-expensive-chicago-parking-ticket-ever-15-million.html
h/t to Reddit’s WTF subreddit. Link goes to short article with link to original source (the Tribune).
“The default judgment is the result of someone in the department deleting dash cam video of the event”
It goes without saying that altering dashcam footage, interview room footage or any other recording used in a police investigation should be punished not just by departmental discipline (termination), but by criminal charges such as official misconduct and obstruction of justice (since evidence is being tampered with). Anything less will not discourage this kind of illegal behavior. Also, dash cam dvd recorders should be locked in the trunk, and accessible only by supervisory personnel.
“I thought it was very funny that the police officer who exposed himself worked at at Bible College.”
I wonder if the bible college knew of his past?
spaceCrev:
Don’t know how long you’ve been reading this blog, spaceCrev, but the point of these posts has never been to suggest a police officer’s job isn’t difficult, or to criticize all cops. It’s to point out that corrupt, incompetent, and even criminal cops are rarely held accountable, and to the extent they are, it’s usually to a much lower standard than everyone else. That’s pretty much par for the course with government employees — and incompetent government employees who aren’t cops certainly get criticized on this blog, too. I guess the one big difference is that most non-cop government employees don’t have the legal authority to use lethal force.
And there have been three occasions when I needed the cops. On one, my car was once broken into. They showed up three hours later to take a report, and told me there wasn’t much they could do. About a week later, I was given a ticket for not wearing my seatbelt. On the second occasion, I was assaulted in the parking lot of a 7-11. They showed up an hour later, took a report, and left. Didn’t even bother to check the store’s security cameras (I checked with the store a week later). On the third occasion, a neighbor in my apartment building called the cops on some gang bangers two floors above me. Before he even addressed the reason he was called in the first place, the cop they dispatched forced his way into *my* apartment with his gun drawn because he looked in my window, saw my then-girlfriend and I horsing around, and assumed I was beating her.
I’m sure lots of other people have had great experiences with cops. And I’ve no doubt cops have saved many lives. But you brought up my experiences with them. So I thought I’d share.
I’ve never understood why so many people think this somehow excuses police misconduct. It never fails, even in cases of egregious, criminal misconduct, some post always throws out the “difficult job” card. Surgeons have difficult jobs too; when they fuck up, do we just throw up our and hands and declare, “oh, well their job is difficult, so they don’t need to face consequences for their actions.” I would think it axiomatic that to enforce the law, one must obey it first.
To anyone in the cop crowd who uses the “cops have a dangerous and difficult job” excuse to deflect criticism of the police, I have three comments:
1. Your job is NOT extraordinarily dangerous by a long shot. For starters, the Bureau of Labor Statistics data on job fatalities places police work well outside of the top 10. Fishermen, loggers, agricultural workers, and sanitation workers – yes garbagemen – are all more likely to die on the job than cops.
2. The danger you incur on the streets is SIGNIFICANTLY LESS than that experienced by almost any ordinary citizen the moment he or she steps out his front door. Yours is one of the only professions that is actually legally empowered to defend itself with deadly force at virtually all times, and legally carry the tools to do so (a gun) at all times. A cop on the streets is therefore in a significantly safer position than practically ANY civilian, as civilian gun carrying in public is severely regulated and in some places barred completely.
3. Your job is NOT particularly difficult by any reasonable standard. It has extremely minimal prerequisite educational qualifications, seldom exceeding a GED and a couple hours in night classes from a community college. It comes with a lifetime full-salaried pension and benefits plan. It’s darn near impossible for you to get fired for anything short of rape or homicide (and even then there are exceptions). And you have one of the earliest retirement ages of any profession. A career cop can retire before age 50 and continue to draw full salaried pension for the remainder of his life. Name one single other profession that has a retirement package as cozy as your own with such low prerequisite job qualifications. Not even the military compares with the cushy taxpayer-funded retirement package you and your unions have secured for yourselves.
My guess is that cop in Georgia is now being exposed to on a hourly basis, even if it is just a look. Something seriously wrong with that type of an individual.
*sigh*
This is NOT a complaint.
I’m tired and discouraged for a lot of reasons today (Afghanistan leading the list) and this just fits right in with the melancholy.
Thanks again for all of your work.
Tip of the hat to the InjusticeNews Twitter feed for several of these stories.
I hate, despise, and generally malign the entire concept of Twitter. InjusticeNews may just change that.
The Raleigh North Carolina (Wake County) police do not
use videos in their DWI cases.
I asked a lawyer why –considering the ubiquity of these cameras–
and he said too many cops were getting in trouble for protocol violations … so they did away with the videos which would easily distinguish impaired vs non-impaired drivers.
So now the cops can just lie their way trough these pesky trials.
Somebody should do a story on this.
Like J sub D, I say “Thanks for your work”, Radley.
However, couldn’t this have waited until Monday, when I’m already depressed?
spaceCrev,
A friend of mine used to work at Midway Airport in Chicago. He was the guy you went to to report lost luggage. His workday consisted of being continuously shouted at by an endless stream of loud, angry, hysterical, and frequently verbally abusive people. It was an incredibly stressful job. Nevertheless, he did not go around committing violent crimes or engaging in corrupt efforts to pervert the legal system. Apparently, you believe it would be unreasonable to hold professional police officers to the exacting standard of decency upheld by a college kid working as a low-level clerk.
MDGuy,
Actually regarding surgeons I suspect their could be a blog devoted to thier misdeeds as well. They are another organization that is largely self-policing and usually immune from criminal actions possibly because the prosecution doesn’t have the nessasary expertize. Try bringing a video camera into a hospital it’s usually prohibited.
aaaaaaannd spaceCrev demonstrates why this blog has so much material, day in and day out.
Mike: that’s true. A surgeon gets to literally bury his mistakes. Unlike the cops, however:
1. A surgeon cannot claim various forms of qualified immunity
2. If you want to investigate a bad surgeon, you will not see a band of armed surgeons kicking down your door or harrassing and intimidating your family.
3. A surgeon might be able to cover up a mistake on the job, but cannot cover up mistakes outside the job.
4. I have never heard of a surgeon beating the crap out of someone and trying to claim it was somehow part of the job.
5. Surgeons don’t kill your dog too
Frankly, I’m just sick of excuses in general from cops. And boy are they ever full of excuses…the job’s too hard, the job’s dangerous, we aren’t paid enough, our hours are too long, nobody respects us…or if it’s a crime, the line becomes some bullsh*t about how we “don’t know all the facts yet” (a line cops will use even when the whole thing was caught on video) or “innocent until proven guilty” (like they care about that one when arresting other people!). You can even find the excuses on the most egregious cases of police misconduct. Look at the comments on the link above about the DUI cop from Chicago. Most comments and even some cop comments rightly condemn the guy, but it is not difficult to pinpoint exactly which ones came from that cop’s fellow buddies down at the Fraternal Order of Police hall. And they’re pretty disgusting and callous excuses…such as one alleging that the two victims he killed had alcohol in their vehicle as if that somehow would make the DUI cop’s crime any less offensive.
No matter what it is with cops, there’s always an endless whiny driveling stream of excuses…all from a profession that supposedly prides itself on its machismo and toughness. But the answer for every single one of those whiny cops is simple:
IF THE JOB IS THAT TOUGH, THEN QUIT THE FREAKING POLICE FORCE AND DO SOMETHING ELSE WITH YOUR PUTRID EXCUSE FOR A LIFE.
SGE,
Certainly that is true. I was just talking about Madguy’s statement which seems to imply when a Surgeon fucks up we as a society tolerate it less than when the police do. I’d guess its about the same (for on the job offences). Cops mistakes aren’t scrutinized because the only person who can arrest a cop is another cop. Its somewhat the same with surgeons, the only person who can determine if a mistake is even made is another surgeon and then there isn’t usually much evidence (other than a body).
You can sue surgeons. You can’t sue cops.
@PW(#15):
Cops are civilians, too. Unless they’re military police (and those guys don’t seem to have the problems that civilian police do).
Mike, I’d have to disagree with you. As people have noted, you can sue a surgeon. Even if their mistake ends up in the morgue, the family can still investigate and sue. On top of that, not every mistake ends up causing a fatality. I read a news story not too long ago about someone who had a some piece of surgical equipment left in and sewed up by accident. The foreign object caused him years of pain and complications until they finally did another surgery and removed it. Obviously, the guy sued the shit out of the original surgeon. I’d say that society definitely has a lower tolerance for mistakes from surgeons and medical personnel in general than cops. If you think about it, it really makes sense – almost everyone is going to have contact with medical personnel at some point in their lives, so there is a more universal demand for accountability. With cops, most people just think, “well I don’t break the law, cops are for all those bad people out there” so they don’t care as much when they read about misconduct. It goes hand in hand with the “difficult job” card – the “asshole had it coming” card.
Any closed group of people with shared expertise and hardship and identification tends to become self-protecting to some extent–it’s that us/them circuitry we’ve all been equipped with by evolution. I think this is even more the case when you have a strong shared identity as “the good guys,” and have a public trust.
This is a large part of what’s behind a great many scandals and tolerated misbehavior: Corrupt and brutal cops, pedophile priests, incompetent and drug-addicted doctors, soldiers committing war crimes, etc. In all those cases, the group-identification made members of the group who weren’t doing the bad stuff willing to cover for the bad guys, or at least to assume they weren’t bad guys until overwhelming evidence was presented otherwise. And even when it was clear that a member of those groups was up to no good, the usual goal is more to quiet it down than to stop the evil behavior or punish the bad guy.
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billy-jay, As a former MP, I can say that Military Cops are just the same as “civilian” ones. I was in the 108th MP company, Ft. Bragg, NC. in the late 1980’s. While some of us were naive youths thinking we were doing something noble, the reality was that a large number of them were vicious thugs. Drug users/dealers, thieves, brutal masochists, thugs that see the law as a way to take advantage of others. These are the ones that were recruited at the end of their term of service by civilian police forces, the rest of us, disillusioned, went on to find jobs in the private sector, as far away law enforcement as possible.
err, that should have been brutal sadists… clearly I was paying attention in English class when the teacher said “Proof read your work before turning it in.”