Browsing Posts tagged law
A police officer is a public servant and is supposed to uphold the law. The problem arises when the police act like the mafia and insist that you do as they say while they can do whatever they wish. No officer is above the law, yet alone 16. To think anything different is to realize that the police think themselves above the law and beyond reproach.
The unsealed indictments contained more than 1,600 criminal counts, the bulk of them misdemeanors having to do with making tickets disappear as favors for friends, relatives and others with clout. But they also outlined more serious crimes, related both to ticket-fixing and drugs, grand larceny and unrelated corruption. Four of the officers were charged with helping a man get away with assault.
Why do police officers not only think it’s okay to commit misdemeanors in fixing tickets, but that it’s also perfectly fine with helping someone get away with assault? Fixing tickets is corruption and fraud and it exposes the fact that the police believe they are above the law.
Jose R. Ramos, an officer in the 40th Precinct whose suspicious behavior spawned the protracted investigation, was accused of two dozen crimes, including attempted robbery, attempted grand larceny, transporting what he thought was heroin for drug dealers and revealing the identity of a confidential informant.
Five civilians were also arrested in the case. Among them was Officer Ramos’s wife, charged with participating with him in an insurance scam.
And how did the police departments react to hearing of these crimes?
Members of the news media were prevented by court officers from walking down the hallway where more than 100 off-duty police officers had gathered outside the courtroom.
The assembled police officers blocked cameras from filming their colleagues, in one instance grabbing lenses and shoving television camera operators backward.
The police are acting like thugs, defending their gang from anyone who is attempting to get at the truth and report the story of their corruption.
The case, troubling to many New Yorkers because of its implication that the police officers believed they deserved special treatment, is expected to have long tentacles. Scores of other officers accused of fixing tickets could face departmental charges. Some officers have already retired. Moreover, the indictments may jeopardize thousands of cases in which implicated officers are important witnesses and may be seen as untrustworthy by Bronx juries.
Federal agents earlier in the week arrested eight current and former officers on accusations that they had brought illegal firearms, slot machines and black-market cigarettes into New York City. Recently, other officers have been charged in federal court with making false arrests, and there was testimony in a trial in Brooklyn that narcotics detectives planted drugs on innocent civilians.
A lieutenant, Jennara Cobb, worked for internal affairs and leak information to other police officers. How can anyone ever trust internal affairs ever again when you can’t trust those who are supposed to keep information in internal investigations secret?
The ticket-fixing investigation began serendipitously in December 2008, after investigators began looking into accusations that Officer Ramos allowed a friend, Lee King, to sell drugs out of two barber shops named Who’s First that the officer owned in the Bronx. A wiretap was placed on Officer Ramos, which yielded conversations about fixing tickets.
The authorities said Officer Ramos provided Mr. King with an apartment, a cellphone, a car and a parking placard. He was one of the civilians arrested.
We all know that not every cop is corrupt, but when police officers defend those who are, just who are we supposed to respect in uniform and why is it justifiable that they can break the law simply because they are the police and corruption has been around for thousands of years? The levels of self-entitlement is reason enough that these officers should be fired.
On Friday morning, on the street outside the courthouse, some 350 officers massed behind barricades and brandished signs expressing sentiments like “It’s a Courtesy Not a Crime.”
When caught actually committing a crime, the police attempt to claim it’s just a courtesy and nothing for civilians to worry about. The audacity to claim, “we’re just following orders,” is an attempt to throw blame off themselves. After all, they’re just doing what they’re told, so they can’t possibly understand why people are angry at them. To them, it’s a perk of the job.
If you can’t understand that it is a crime to purposefully break the law to aid people close to you, then you will never convince the public that you are not corrupt. It’s evident that the corruption is endemic in the NYPD. The only way to root it out is to completely clean house and start over.
Those that stand idly by and do nothing should also think twice about the careers they’ve chosen as standing by and doing nothing is just as bad as helping in the corruption. Until then, whenever a citizen encounters a police officer, they will assume that they’ve run into a corrupt officer instead of one of the few good ones out there, something that never ends well.
Ian Millhiser, Center for American Progress joins Thom Hartmann. Is the Supreme Court about to give corporations the right to commit genocide? Believe it or not – that may happen. The High Court has agreed to hear the case of Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum which could give corporations immunity from any lawsuits for their employees murdering, raping, or torturing people in the areas where they’re drilling for oil or fielding mercenary armies – just as long as they’re carrying out the atrocities under the heading of corporate business.
The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur on an investigative piece in Bloomberg on the Koch Brothers.
With advances in technology, police are increasingly turning to gadgets they can use in the field to perform their duties. One of the latest devices is a wearable camera that clips onto a shirt pocket and can record everything an officer says and does. Still, some officers are hesitant to use them
Levenson said some Alabama police departments have refrained from installing dashboard cameras because officers feared the video footage would get them in trouble, but roughly 80 percent of the time an officer’s behavior is questioned and the incident is caught on tape, “it exonerates the officer from wrongdoing. Officers have found it to be their friend. If nobody is doing anything wrong, nobody should be worried.”
If officers are worried about dashboard cameras getting them into trouble, then maybe they should rethink their behavior while on duty. Police departments should also consider the fact that they still have 20% of cases where an officer is found guilty of some type of wrong doing.
Baldwin County criminal defense attorney John Beck said video evidence helps him decide how to proceed with a client.
“In every case where there is a possibility that a dash cam or any other camera can shed light on the facts, I’m asking for it,” Beck said. “This is all a search for the truth. And I don’t think either law enforcement or defense attorneys should be afraid to seek preservation of the truth, and having a video and audio record is absolutely the best method to preserve the truth.”
A video and/or audio recording only helps to clarify what occurred during incidents and altercations. Still, there are some concerns that remain.
But Ken Nixon, a Mobile attorney whose clients’ driving under the influence cases comprise about half his criminal defense, said the small size of the clip-on camera also creates the potential for abuse and possibly illegal recordings.
In Alabama, the law requires knowledge of a recording by at least one person in a conversation, unless a warrant is issued. That means an officer would not have to tell a suspect he’s being recorded.
But Nixon said the shirt-pocket cameras are so small they could be left inside a patrol car while an officer stepped outside.
If two suspects inside the car started talking, without knowing a camera was on, any recording of the conversation would be illegal.
While these concerns are legitimate in homes, there are arguments about the expectations of privacy when out in public. The main goal, however, should be that, if the public can be filmed by the police, then the police should be filmed by the public. This notion, however, is still very controversial and many legal questions still need to be resolved before proceeding further.
“They’re good when they’re used properly,” Nixon said. “But I think they’re invasive, if not illegal, when used improperly.”
This is one of the biggest problems that have arisen from wearable cameras. Police have been caught tampering with dash cameras whenever they are shown to have been wrong. This has ranged from cameras malfunctioning or being shut off completely during altercations and confrontations with citizens.
In order to provide the integrity of video and audio evidence, all data needs to be store off-site, with an independent third party. Anything less will leave accusations of unfairness. If the police could abide by this, then an equitable solution may be possible.
