Police earning the hate

[dodint]

Ah, yes, there it is.

It's not completely wasteful to conduct these investigations. But it's mostly wasteful when they don't do anything about it.

[Shyster]

Between 2014 and 2020, a complaint of sexual misconduct, intimate partner violence, or harassment was made against New Orleans police officers about every 10 days, according to a report published late last year by the Umbrella Coalition, a coalition of 13 local and national nonprofit and civil rights organizations. According to the report, nearly 190 of New Orleans’ police officers had complaints of this nature filed against them with the department’s public integrity unit. But, in that time, the department sustained only three percent of complaints involving sexual or intimate partner violence, according to a spokesperson for the New Orleans Police Department.

The Umbrella Coalition found that, among other claims, officers were accused of watching pornography at work, sexually assaulting arrestees, stalking former partners, sexually harassing a restaurant server while drinking alcohol on duty, posting revenge porn of a woman, threatening a former partner with a gun, sexually harassing fellow employees, beating a child, punching a woman in the jaw, and numerous other allegations of domestic battery and rape, including one incident in which an officer allegedly sexually assaulted someone while another officer watched. The department currently employs about 950 officers, but that number fluctuated during the years the Umbrella Coalition studied, and at least 500 officers who worked for NOPD during those years have since resigned or retired.

[dodint]

"NOPD investigated itself..." Oh, we're good then.

Hoping to investigate myself for bank robbery one day.

[Shyster]

[dodint]

Cancers kill their hosts. It's more of a parasite vibe.

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[tifosi77]

The phrase 'thin blue line' was first popularized by long time LAPD chief William Parker in the 1950s. He was tasked with creating a modern police force in Southern California befitting the region's new rise to acclaim in the mid-20th century prosperity boom. (I'm sure most of us have seen L.A. Confidential...........)

Anyway, one of his principal motives was to prevent what he saw as the inevitable rapid decay of the City of Angels stemming from the influx of dislocated African Americans migrating away from the Jim Crow south. His assessment of the situation was that, at the current rate of population growth, the city would be nearly half Negro (his words) in a few decades, and if you wanted to keep your family safe in the face of this you needed to support a strong LAPD. A strong police was the the only thing separating civil order from the roughshod criminality that would surely follow such a shift in dynamics. He hosted a local TV show, in a panel discussion format, called "The Thin Blue Line" in which such law enforcement issues were discussed openly for all the residents to see. To address this looming calamity, he recruited heavily from the ranks of recently discharged military veterans and also from existing police forces in southern states.

Among his other 'reforms' were to change the primary mode of operation of the PD from a walking beat/neighborhood cop approach to a smaller rapid response force. This shift in tonality was the earliest incarnation of the 'warrior cop' mentality featuring the police as neighborhood occupiers, and also also one of the earliest shifts to the concept of the police as a 'force' instead of a 'department' - or even just 'the police' - in public discourse.

I must revisit Balko. I remember the discussion about SWAT in the 1970s, but I don't recall him addressing this earlier stuff very much at all. I'm sure that's just a memory gap on my part.

[tifosi77]

And also: Up until 2009 LAPD headquarters was officially named "Parker Center".

[Shyster]

I must revisit Balko. I remember the discussion about SWAT in the 1970s, but I don't recall him addressing this earlier stuff very much at all. I'm sure that's just a memory gap on my part.

I'm not sure Balko does describe those earlier events. Certainly, he mentions that the LAPD was the originator of much of the SWAT team concept. The fact that SWAT creator (and future Police Chief) Daryl Gates originally wanted "SWAT" to stand for "Special Weapons Attack Team" also demonstrates the mentality of the police in creating that team.

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Police said they stopped one man on Barnaby Street SE, noticed an “L shaped object” in his satchel and found a loaded .22-caliber pistol in the bag.

They approached another man whom they said they saw smoking marijuana on Congress Street SE, then watched as he threw a .45-caliber ghost gun with a laser attachment into some nearby bushes.

In yet another case, officers said they spotted a man who had been smoking marijuana tossing a black bag to the floor as he hopped into a parked car on South Capitol Street SW. Inside, they discovered a .380-caliber gun.

All three men were arrested on gun charges, and their weapons were seized by D.C. police officers, who detailed the circumstances in charging documents. The cases had been making their way through the court system until October, when all three cases were dropped.

The officers who made the seizures were assigned to the police department’s 7th District, where internal affairs investigators are probing whether those on a violent crime squad lied on internal reports. The investigation has focused on police interactions in which the officers stopped people and seized their guns, but did not make arrests. Because of questions about the officers’ credibility, prosecutors began reviewing previous cases in which suspects had been charged — to see if the police accounts of events could withstand scrutiny.

In October, the month after the internal probe became public, prosecutors dismissed 65 gun possession cases from 2021 and 2022 involving officers in the 7th District, which includes communities in Southeast Washington such as Anacostia and Washington Highlands, according to D.C. Superior Court records reviewed by The Washington Post. Prosecutors dropped another 25 drug cases involving 7th District officers, The Post found.

Yeah, 65 cases dropped to date means that "the police accounts of events" did not withstand scrutiny. The Post doesn't come out and say it, but this means that cops in DC have been lying on their reports and illegally fabricating justifications for searches. Of course, those who've read this thread know that because it happens so often, there's a term for cops perjuring themselves in court and on police reports: testilying.

[dodint]

I must be tired. I read "with one accused of drawing a gun at a bar when asked to pay his tab" I thought they meant he drew it on a napkin so the bartender could make the inference.

[Shyster]

[Shyster]

A drunk Utah police officer, Thomas Caygle rear-ended a couple at a stop light and their fender bender quickly turned for the worse.

Driving a Dodge Ram 1500, the off-duty cop slams into the back of the couple's Ford Fusion. Once they pull over to the side of the road and start conversing, things take an aggressive turn. When the boyfriend goes to assess the damage to his trunk, Caygle accelerates and pins the man between the two cars. Stuck there for 35 seconds, it is his distraught girlfriend who eventually pulls their car forward and saves him. "Any longer, and I would have lost my legs," he says.

When the police arrive, they converse calmly with Caygle before taking him to the station, where he can be seen lamenting his upcoming consequences. “I put so much f***ing time and effort into my career and then something stupid like this is more than likely going to f*** me,” he says. Caygle is currently on administrative leave.

[tifosi77]

Tl;dr - successful argument that police destruction of private property is exempt from sovereign immunity defense because the destruction amounts to a 'taking' a la eminent domain. While this is encouraging news, I'm kinda surprised this is the first time such an argument has been made (at least successfully).

[Shyster]

It was a busy day:

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Seven sheriff’s deputies and three hospital workers have been charged with murder in this case.

As many as 10 sheriff’s deputies and medical staff at Virginia’s Central State Hospital can be seen piling on top of a shackled Irvo Otieno for approximately 11 minutes until he stops moving, according to new video showing the encounter that led to the 28-year-old Black man’s death.

The hospital surveillance video, which has no sound, shows Otieno’s final moments on March 6, from the time Henrico County sheriff’s deputies drag him into a hospital admissions room in handcuffs and leg irons, to the 11 minutes in which they restrain Otieno on the ground, to the moment when they release Otieno’s limp body around 4:40 p.m.

Minutes later, video shows workers beginning to apply chest compressions and a defibrillator machine to Otieno’s upper body, before a medical technician drapes him with a white sheet at 5:48 p.m.

[Shyster]

[Shyster]

Police in New Hampshire first demanded that a 67-year-old woman first take a breathalyzer and then arrested her for being intoxicated in her own home. There is no law against drinking at home.

[tifosi77]

Los Angeles police accidentally release photos of undercover officers to watchdog website

In a still-unfolding drama that has reached its top ranks, the Los Angeles Police Department accidentally released the names and photos of numerous undercover officers to a watchdog group that posted them on its website.

The controversy began late last week when the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition launched a searchable online database — called Watch the Watchers — of more than 9,300 city police officers’ photos, complete with their names, ethnicity, rank, date of hire, division/bureau and badge numbers. The group called the site the first of its kind in the country.

Stop LAPD Spying officials said they believe police officers are not entitled to the same expectation of privacy as other residents because of their status as civil servants. They said in an interview about the site that what they published was obtained through a public records request by a civilian journalist and turned over by the LAPD.

Department leaders said over the weekend that the release of pictures of officers working in an undercover capacity was inadvertent, and they have launched an internal investigation to determine how the mistake occurred.

https://watchthewatchers.net/