“About 1/3 of the cop cars I have seen have their radio mike looped over their rearview mirrors. But, of course, the law doesn’t apply to them.”

Still, it would be interesting to go into court with a couple of photos and ask Officer Unfriendly about the windshield obstructions in his personal and duty cars…

Some people may not mind the aroma and taste of soap on their toothbrush, but I sure do.

Having a micro-sized bar of soap inside a ziplock baggie stored inside another ziplock baggie containing paste and brush proved too much for the TSA agent’s fragile little mind.

I’d indulged in a split-second of slack-jawed amazement upon hearing that my second baggie would be confiscated… before uttering “gimme back by bag” and snatching it from his fingers.

In retrospect, I believe I am lucky to be alive.

While Radley put up a post devoted to this one, which is great, I figured you deserve a reply here.

It is a part of the problem that small towns that lower their standards so they can hire on someone at a rate they feel they can afford, but not isolated to WV. After all there was the recent case of Michael Meissner in Texas who jumped around from small town to small town as a police chief / lone officer while running a child porn business and extortion racket on the side. (http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com/?p=925)

Of course, another portion of the problem is that, from state to state, there are different standards used and different criteria for pulling a police officer’s certificate, and in some states you can’t… and so long as a criminal history doesn’t include a felony, the officer can keep skipping from department to department.

Also, the other portion of the problem is that, since personnel records are a closely guarded secret, one department may not be able to see a prospective candidate’s misconduct record and history. Sure, a small town getting a deal might not check too hard to see why it’s getting a deal on a cop, but it doesn’t help that it’s so hard to track these guys and their histories.

It’s a complex problem… and this guy definitely isn’t the only one out there.

From the article, I get the impression that the problem is as much small towns trying to circumvent hiring restrictions as the “officers” themselves.

There seems to be an implication in the thread that, if the small towns paid better, they’d get a better quality of applicant.

OTOH, I suspect the “gypsy cops” are barrel-scrapings who keep going back to the only “job” they “know”. (I wouldn’t be surprized if there was an element of power-tripping in their motivation, however.)

Finally, I wonder how much of this ability to be rehired is a product of the “thin blue line” taking care of their own.

Oh, I already have him in our statistical database for his conviction, just didn’t see the timeline. I’m thinking about doing a piece about him and a few other gypsy cops so that was a good find for that, thanks!

http://wvgazette.com/News/200911140678

Thanks for posting that MacGregory, I just added it to our news feed. Don’t often get the chance to peer into the history of a gypsy cop like that.

http://www.wvgazette.com/News/200911150269

A chronology of how a bad cop moves from town to town getting hired as a cop despite his record.

| Kristen | November 15th, 2009 at 10:18 am

On the Georgia case: they’ve probably spent assloads of money gathering evidence and hiring experts, but somehow can’t scrounge up enough for a lawyer for the accused.

Not to mention the possibility of how embarassing it would be if, after a lawyer was hired, he might look at the evidence and find that they arrested the wrong man.

Cops pull people over for that to build a HISTORY that it is a normal/common reason for stops.

That way, when they do get the “lucky” stop that turns up drugs/guns/etc. they can pull out their hundreds/thousands of prior stops (documented via warning notices, usually not citations) so that the defense can’t say it was an isolated/unconstitutional stop.

Paco

http://theodoramichaels.com/articles/meep.php

Because we are endowed by our ruling elite with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are whatever in their great condescension they are willing to allow us at that particular time.