My crime column this week is a follow-up on Northern Virginia’s extremely secretive police agencies. There’s a law in the state legislature that would require them to be marginally more forthcoming. Naturally, law enforcement officials across the state are fighting to defeat it.
From Paul Bloom’s terrific new book How Pleasure Works:
While people sometimes describe sex as their most pleasurable act, time-management studies find that the average American adult devotes just four minutes per day to sex—almost exactly the same time spent filling out tax forms for the government.
It’s that time. We have a few slots open in this year’s league.
Entry fee is $75, and we’ll be doing an online draft Wednesday night at 8:30pm ET.
Send me an email if you’ld like to play.
So as I mentioned previously, I’m going to start a Nashville blog soon. The idea is to be sort of a “journalist explores the city” theme, with photos, interviews, interesting stories, etc. And of course lots of music.
Below are three photos I took around town that I’m thinking of as the blog’s header. I thought I’d see which one Agitator readers prefer.
Incidentally, the font is called “Nashville,” and is inspired by the legendary Hatch Show Print company. You can download it for free here.
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“Fake Empire,” by The National.
The resisting-arrest conviction last week of Felicia Gibson has left a lot of people wondering. Can a person be charged with resisting arrest while observing a traffic stop from his or her own front porch?
Salisbury Police Officer Mark Hunter thought so, and last week District Court Judge Beth Dixon agreed. Because Gibson did not at first comply when the officer told her and others to go inside, the judge found Gibson guilty of resisting, delaying or obstructing an officer.
Gibson wasn’t the only one watching the stop, and wasn’t the only one who refused to go inside. So why was she arrested and not the others? This might have had something to do with it:
She was the only one holding up a cell-phone video camera.
You have to wonder if Officer Hunter is fit for police work if he’s so easily distracted that merely observing him from a distance qualifies as obstructing him from performing his duties.
I’ve written before about the “professional courtesy” problem, where police officers let fellow officers off the hook for driving while intoxicated (see here, here, and here). The latest example comes from Indianapolis, where on August 6, Officer David Bisard struck two motorcycles stopped at a red light, killing one person and critically injuring two others. Police reports initially blamed the bikers for the accident, though subsequent reports confirm that the motorcyclists were doing exactly what they’re supposed to do when an emergency vehicle approaches. According to the Indianapolis Star, Bisard has an aggressive history on the road. He had more vehicle pursuits than any other cop in Marion County. In two years he’d had 14 such pursuits, with five collisions.
None of the officers who responded on August 6 thought to give Bisard a breath test, or apparently even suspect him of being drunk. At first blush perhaps that’s understandable, given that Bisard was on-duty at the time. But when he was finally given a blood test more than two hours after the accident, he tested at .19. (This is more aggravating when you consider how adept police officers seem to be at detecting booze on citizens who aren’t cops. Last May I was pulled over by an Indiana State Trooper. I’d had two beers over four hours, plus eaten a big dinner, yet he still claimed he was “nearly knocked out by the stench of booze rolling out” of my car. Long story short: I politely asserted my rights and got neither the undeserved DWI, nor the speeding ticket (which I probably deserved)).
Prosecutors initially filed a host of DWI-related charges against Bisard. But on August 19, Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi announced he had no choice but to drop the most serious charges because Bisard’s blood had been drawn by an uncertified lab tech. And because none of Brisard’s fellow officers apparently noticed his intoxication at the scene of the accident, there was no admissible evidence that Brisard was drunk when he caused the crash.
In the face of a pretty furious public backlash, there have at least been some consequences: According to the Star, Brisard does still face a lesser charge of reckless homicide, plus added charges of criminal recklessness. IMPD officials dismissed Lt. George Crooks as coordinator of the multiagency Fatal Alcohol Crash Team, and Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard announced last week that Assistant Chief Darryl Pierce, Deputy Chief Ron Hicks, and Commander John Conley would all be demoted for the handling of Bisard’s case.
A final bit of irony:
As a member of the Noblesville Police Department in the late 1990s, he received awards two years in a row from Mothers Against Drunk Driving and won commendations four years in a row.
Reader Scott Milner writes:
Hi Radley,
Just a quick note to let you know that the drum you’ve been beating for awhile has had some affect on at least one of your readers.
I got called for jury duty this week. The case involved cocaine (possession, delivery and trafficking). Testimony took most of yesterday with closing arguments happening first thing this morning. Shortly after a name was drawn out of a box to determine the alternate juror. Sadly, that name was mine. I would have acquitted via nullification on all counts and was absolutely looking forward to sharing the story with you…
The state’s case was interesting for a number of reasons but I won’t bore you with the details unless you ask. For whatever it’s worth though I want to thank you for helping me develop some courage and convictions regarding the insane war on drugs and hope that at least one of the other 12 of my peers shares similar sentiments.
Didn’t happen that way. Scott emailed me again this evening:
Well, I just got a call from the judge’s secretary. The jury found the defendant guilty on the charge of trafficking. I didn’t ask about the possession or delivery charges… my assumption is that The State was happy to get the trafficking charge and so didn’t request the jury to deliberate on the possession or delivery charges. Or perhaps it’s simply that the trafficking charge was the big one and it became irrelevant as to whether or not a guilty verdict was returned on the other two charges.
I’m disappointed but not surprised. Another person goes to prison despite not having hurt, stolen from or in any other way caused material damage to another. Despite some conflicting and inconsistent testimony from the narcotics officers, and the inability of the state’s forensic examiner to explain some specifics.
As I left I told the bailiff that I’d be happy if the defense counsel contacted me because I want him to know that I was ready to acquit on all charges and why I was prepared to do so.
More people like this, please.
Over at NRO, Daniel Foster tackles the growing influence of police and firefighter unions, and the petulant fearmongering they’re employing when political leaders threaten layoffs or cuts to cushy overtime pay and fat pensions. Excerpt:
The public/private disparity is especially stark when one focuses on public-safety compensation in places such as Oakland; police and firemen have accounted for about 75 percent of expenditures from the city’s general fund over the last five years. Average total compensation for an officer in Oakland — a city in which the median family earns $47,000 — is $162,000 per year.
As with most public-sector workers, a major — and opaque — piece of emergency-services compensation comes in the form of lifelong pensions.
“Public-safety workers tend to receive the most generous public-employee pensions,” says Josh Barro, a Manhattan Institute fellow and expert on state and local finance. “They are based on a significantly shorter career — it is not atypical to see police and fire pensions based on 20 years of service — and they also tend to be more generous as a percentage of salary.”
Other laws make the payouts even more generous. In New York, for instance, a “presumptive disability” law makes it easy for firemen to secure lifetime, tax-free pensions at three-quarters pay; when examining a fireman for the purpose of determining whether he has a work-related disability, a doctor is required to start with the assumption that certain illnesses are job-related even if there is no evidence that they are. A fireman from a Bronx ladder company who develops a lung disorder will qualify for disability retirement even if it’s unclear whether he developed his impairment from smoke inhalation on the job, or from his two-pack-a-day cigarette habit.
The “presumptive disability” bonanza is sometimes exacerbated by abuse. In July, the New York Post told the story of John C. McLaughlin, a 55-year-old former FDNY lieutenant who retired in 2001 with an $86,000-a-year disability pension, after it was determined that he was an asthmatic with diminished lung capacity. This despite the fact that McLaughlin is an accomplished triathlete who regularly competes in long-distance races.
McLaughlin is hardly alone. An astonishing 80 percent of 2010 FDNY retirees have qualified for disability benefits.
Regular readers of this site are well-versed in stories about how difficult police unions have made it to fire police officers for misconduct (and even then, to prevent them from merely taking a job in a different department) even when they commit actual crimes, never mind for mere incompetence. The rogue cop put on “paid leave” is so common it’s become cliche. But here’s a particularly apt recent example from Reading, Pennsylvania, courtesy of the Injustice Everywhere site.
The city policeman who accidentally shot and killed fellow Officer Michael H. Wise II during a shootout six years ago is still being paid about $100,000 per year in salary and benefits by the city of Reading – even though he has been suspended since the shooting.
James A. Palange shot and killed Wise on June 4, 2004, when he mistook the plain-clothed Wise for a criminal as he pulled up to a gunbattle on Schuylkill Avenue that pitted Wise and two other officers against a man hiding behind a car, investigators said.
Six years later, Palange is still being paid $61,911 in salary plus benefits, medical insurance and pension even though he has not worked a day for the city since the shooting.
But it’s not because he cannot work or does not want to.
For the past three years he has been working as one of four full-time police officers in Mohnton. He was hired there in June 2007 and is paid $23.93 an hour…
Reading police Chief William M. Heim said it was a personnel matter and issued a written statement only after consulting with city attorneys and other officials.
“The issue with Officer Palange is an open personnel matter among the city, the officer and the Fraternal Order of Police,” Heim wrote.
He wrote that the issue is complicated by the union contract and civil and criminal cases that followed the shooting.
“The city and the FOP are still making efforts to settle this matter, even as discussions about an arbitration hearing continue,” he wrote.
I don’t know the story behind Wise’s shooting. It’s possible that he’s a great cop who made a mistake and deserves to have his job back. But paying him $100K/year for in salary in benefits for six years while he works as a full-time cop in another jurisdiction is a curious sort of reprimand. Reading, incidentally, ran an $11 million deificit last year, and the city has been in the red since 2007.
Because why not?
Minneapolis settles a lawsuit from alleged WMD-toting zombies:
Seven zombies accused of carrying weapons of mass destruction will be staggering to the bank shortly with a bundle of cash, courtesy of a legal settlement with the City of Minneapolis.
The seven were arrested in 2006 during Aquatennial while dressed for a “Night of the Living Dead.” They were stiff-legging it down Nicollet Mall to protest mindless consumerism when some unhappy soul called 911.
The cops busted the seven for disorderly conduct and said the zombies’ homemade public address rig looked like a weapon of mass destruction. The zombies spent some brief, scary time in jail, where the cops confiscated one protester’s very real prosthetic leg.
They’ve settled for $165,000.
Federal agents are seeking to hire Ebonics translators to help interpret wiretapped conversations involving targets of undercover drug investigations.
Drug Enforcement Agency Special Agent Michael Sanders said the agency recently sent memos asking companies that provide it translation services to help it find nine translators in the Southeast who are fluent in Ebonics.
Ebonics, which is also known as African American Vernacular English, has been described by the man who coined the term as the combination of English vocabulary with African language structure.
Bonus points to the first commenter who knows the relevance of the headline. (And not just that it’s a lyric from “Brown Sugar”.)
Related:
My crime column this week looks at the latest forensics scandal, a report from two former FBI agents that says North Carolina’s state crime lab withheld or mischaracterized evidence in at least 230 cases, including three murder cases that resulted in execution.
Over the weekend someone sent me this (not nearly comprehensive) list of forensic scandals. It includes a few I hadn’t heard about. Including this one:
In one case, Dr. Campbell claimed to identify to a medical certainty the body of Melody Cutlip; the real Melody Cutlip was later found alive and well in Florida.
Dr. Campbell has also testified beyond the limits of acceptable science in his field, stating in court that bite marks matched to a reasonable degree of medical or dental certainty.
As you might have guessed, Dr. Campbell is a bite mark specialist. In fact, he’s considered one of the country’s best.
It’s worth noting that Campbell also testified in favor of wrongly convicted Ray Krone, whose exoneration led to defense attorney Christopher Plourd’s “competency test” on Michael West.
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