Cont: The behaviour of US police officers - part 2

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Captain_Swoop said:
Bowman's encounter near his Monroe home came less than three weeks after troopers from the same embattled agency punched, stunned and dragged another Black motorist, Ronald Greene, before he died in police custody on a rural roadside in northeast Louisiana. Video of Greene's death similarly remained under wraps before AP obtained and published it earlier this year.

Federal prosecutors are examining both cases in a widening investigation into police brutality and potential cover-ups involving both troopers and state police brass.
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This Ronald Greene case gets crazier and crazier.

Greene, a black man in Monroe, was brutally beaten and died in May 2019. State troopers originally told Greene's family that he died in a crash. However, body camera footage that came to light showed the truth. The policeman who investigated this, Trooper Albert Paxton, apparently wanted Trooper Hollingsworth arrested a week after the incident, but this was not done and Hollingsworth then committed suicide.

Louisiana State Police's second-in-command, Lieutenant Colonel Doug Cain, is now also implicated in the cover-up of Ronald Greene's death. Documents show Cain not only knew what was happening but was also leaking internal affairs information to his former boss.

Paxton tried to get other officers charged but was brushed aside by Cain. Trooper Paxton then called State Police "a criminal organization" , and announced his own retirement from the department last week and testified at the capitol that investigators were now targeting him.

https://www.wbrz.com/news/second-in-command-at-state-police-implicated-in-ronald-greene-cover-up/
 
Oops all bad apples again

Louisiana State Police's second-in-command, Lieutenant Colonel Doug Cain, is implicated in the cover-up of Ronald Greene's death in new documents obtained by the WBRZ Investigative Unit through a public records request.

It's the first time Cain's name has been associated with the cover-up, and the documents show Cain not only knew what was happening but was also doing a lot behind the scenes, including leaking internal affairs information to his old boss, Kevin Reeves, after Reeves left the agency.
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https://www.wbrz.com/news/second-in-command-at-state-police-implicated-in-ronald-greene-cover-up/

Police originally claimed that Greene died in a crash fleeing police. Bodycams proved that was a lie. Greene survived the crash and was viciously beaten by the cops at the scene.

During the arrest, he was stunned, punched, and placed in a chokehold. He was also dragged face down while handcuffed and shackled, and he was left face down for at least nine minutes. At least six white troopers were involved in the arrest.

When Greene's corpse was brought to the hospital, police told doctors that his car had run into a tree, a story a doctor said "does not add up", given the nature of Greene's injuries and the fact that there were two stun-gun probes lodged in his body;
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Ronald_Greene
 
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New Report Sheds Light On Baltimore Police Department’s Disgraced Gun Trace Task Force

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Two years, more than 100 interviews and thousands of pages of documents into one of the biggest corruption scandals in Baltimore Police history have all led to this, the results of the independent investigation into the disgraced Gun Trace Task Force are out.

Eight officers in the unit, including ringleader Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, were convicted of racketeering, armed robbery, selling drugs, falsifying overtime and planting evidence on suspects they arrested. A total of 13 defendants were charged in the scandal since the initial federal indictment of Jenkins, Momodu Gondo, Evodio Hendrix, Daniel Hersl, Jemell Rayam, Marcus Taylor and Maurice Ward in 2017. Sgt. Thomas Allers was later indicted and eventually pleaded guilty to charges of racketeering conspiracy and racketeering offenses, including nine robberies.

“These former BPD officers constituted not a single criminal gang, but instead a shifting constellation of corrupt officers who discovered each other during the course of their careers and committed their crimes individually, in small groups, and then in larger groups,” the report said.
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Of course, this has had an effect on criminal cases:

As for the victims of the GTTF, $13 million has been paid in restitution to them, with some cases still pending.

Over 800 criminal cases were dropped due to the scandal.
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With cops like this, who needs crooks?
 
Video shows Florida police sergeant grabbing fellow officer by her throat
A Florida police sergeant has been relieved of his supervisory responsibilities and is under investigation after he was filmed grabbing an officer by her throat, according to officials.
Sunrise police shared body camera video of the Nov. 19 incident with NBC News, but the footage was muted with faces blurred, except for the sergeant's.

Police officers were arresting a "verbally and physically resistive" suspect, accused of a violent felony, when the unidentified sergeant arrived and became aggressive with him, Sunrise Police Chief Anthony W. Rosa said in a statement.
The sergeant engaged in a verbal altercation with the suspect sitting inside a patrol vehicle and “escalated” the encounter, according to the chief.
The police body camera footage showed the sergeant ducking his head inside the patrol vehicle to talk to the suspect and holding a can of pepper spray, though he did not deploy it.

Rosa called the sergeant's behavior “inappropriate and unprofessional” and said he “unnecessarily elevated the demeanor of the suspect."
A concerned officer ran toward the sergeant and pulled him by the back of his duty belt, Rosa said.
The video footage shows the sergeant turn around while backpedaling as he was pulled by the officer. He then momentarily places his hand at the throat of the officer and pushes her backward, until her back hits a nearby police vehicle, according to the clip and the statement from the chief. The sergeant then walks away.
Rosa said the officer who pulled the sergeant was following the department's policies and procedures that call for intervention when there’s “imminent fear of engagements escalating unnecessarily.”
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https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...ant-accused-grabbing-officer-throat-rcna12236
 
ponderingturtle said:
I suspect it is based on the idea that it is fine to lie to suspects and here produce fake documents to support it. Putting such things into court would be illegal.
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I think that doctrine needs work. I do understand that in some circumstances it's justifiable to use a ruse to get a suspect to confess. But when the same process may lead an innocent suspect to plead guilty, fearing that the evidence, however impossible it seems to be, may be enough to get them convicted... that can't be allowed.
 
gnome said:
I think that doctrine needs work. I do understand that in some circumstances it's justifiable to use a ruse to get a suspect to confess. But when the same process may lead an innocent suspect to plead guilty, fearing that the evidence, however impossible it seems to be, may be enough to get them convicted... that can't be allowed.
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I would tend to agree with this.

Especially considering that in many jurisdictions in the United States, in addition to Guilty and Not Guilty accused persons can also give No Contest or so-called "Alford pleas", where they can decline to admit guilt but concede that the evidence against them in strong enough to likely result in a conviction in a trial. I think a rational-minded innocent person could be convinced that it is mathematically in his best interest to plea guilty, or one of these alternative pleas, if the police can fabricate DNA evidence as a ruse during interrogation. DNA evidence is damn hard to argue against.
 
gnome said:
I think that doctrine needs work. I do understand that in some circumstances it's justifiable to use a ruse to get a suspect to confess. But when the same process may lead an innocent suspect to plead guilty, fearing that the evidence, however impossible it seems to be, may be enough to get them convicted... that can't be allowed.
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This is actually a tremendous problem IMO. It leads to people not trusting the police. Which results in fewer people who have knowledge regarding crimes coming forward to provide evidence. Which results in lower clearance rates. Which results in even FEWER people trusting the police.

I recall reading statistics to the effect that fewer than half of all murders of African Americans in Chicago are reported to the police. And only about 1/3 (35%) ever result in convictions. Meaning that 2/3 of those who murder African Americans in Chicago get away with it. That is not a recipe for trust or faith in the law. The perceived legitimacy of the law and law enforcement is linked to compliance rates.
 
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Chicago PD routinely and illegally ran background checks on citizens that signed up to speak at city meetings:

A two-year inspector general’s investigation into who authorized Chicago police to secretly conduct background checks on people who signed up to speak at public meetings and why it was done has ended without an answer, officials said Friday.

But the probe did reveal that the department accessed a state-regulated law enforcement database to obtain information about the speakers who signed up to speak at monthly Chicago Police Board meetings. A police officer can face disciplinary or criminal charges if they access that database — the Law Enforcement Agencies Data System, or LEADS — without a legitimate police purpose.

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The Tribune reported in July 2019 that Chicago police compiled profiles of citizens who signed up to speak at Police Board meetings by searching at least one internal Police Department database to determine if speakers had arrest or prison records, warrants outstanding for their arrest or if they were registered sex offenders.

Police sometimes searched voter registration records, as well as the person’s profiles and comments on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. In some cases, the profiles also included photos of speakers, either from various websites or police mug shots.

Those subjected to the background checks included activists, a police union official, relatives of people killed in police shootings, a woman who told the Police Board she was sexually assaulted by an officer years earlier, a religious leader and attorneys.
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https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-police-board-background-checks-inspector-general-20220115-lhq24x4eibdjjjbhk5kporpi3u-story.html
 
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Shadowdweller said:
This is actually a tremendous problem IMO. It leads to people not trusting the police. Which results in fewer people who have knowledge regarding crimes coming forward to provide evidence. Which results in lower clearance rates. Which results in even FEWER people trusting the police.

I recall reading statistics to the effect that fewer than half of all murders of African Americans in Chicago are reported to the police. And only about 1/3 (35%) ever result in convictions. Meaning that 2/3 of those who murder African Americans in Chicago get away with it. That is not a recipe for trust or faith in the law. The perceived legitimacy of the law and law enforcement is linked to compliance rates.
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It's hard to understate how bad this makes things.

The core of pretty much everything wrong with policing comes back to the problem that in way too many places for way too many people calling the police is not rational behavior. The downsides and dangers far outweigh any benefit to reporting crime or even asking for help. You are more likely to get someone or yourself hurt or wrongfully arrested than get any benefit to self or community.

The more the cops are disconnected from the community the worse this gets. And then the cops use the disrespect this causes to justify being even more unpleasant, an attitude people totally disconnected from this reality politically enable. They buy into the cops and robbers game and think it's just a matter of more money and power for cops to go after the sorry people.

At some point the people poorly served by this give up and take collective personal safety into their own hands, which is how you get gang dynamics and sympathy/apathy towards same.

The baker and undertaker feeling underserved by the system and promising fealty to Vito Corleone, etc. Or Honduran deportees creating MS-13.
 
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