The Behavior Of US Police Officers - Part 3

[Checkmite]

Qualified immunity wouldn't protect the department, they are still liable for the wrongs committed by the officers, it is that he could not get a pay out from the officers involved because they did nothing wrong enough to know it is wrong.

If the officers didn't do anything wrong, what's there for the department be liable for?

 

[shemp]

‘You Just Broke My F–king Door!’: Armed Indiana Cops Burst Into Home Without Warrant, Arrest Black Father and Son While Citing 7-Year-Old Domestic Violence Video In a Different Town

Indiana police stormed into a home without a warrant late last month after breaking the door open and arrested a father and son, claiming they had “compelling evidence” of domestic violence taking place inside the Lafayette home.

However, the compelling evidence was a seven-year-old video from another home in another town showing two people who were not even at the house that Lafayette police had entered without a warrant, according to the 52-year-old father, William Neal.

The incident took place on May 21, resulting in Neal and his 18-year-old son being arrested on charges of resisting police, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail.

 

[pgwenthold]

‘You Just Broke My F–king Door!’: Armed Indiana Cops Burst Into Home Without Warrant, Arrest Black Father and Son While Citing 7-Year-Old Domestic Violence Video In a Different Town

This doesn't make any sense.

They didn't have a warrant, so they would have needed suspicion that there was an active dangerous situation.

But you don't get probable cause for an active dangerous situation from a recording.

Just smh

 

[Donal]

How is "resisiting police" a crime? And no other charge?

These 2 people face jail time for refusing to be arrested for no reason?

 

[pgwenthold]

How is "resisiting police" a crime? And no other charge?

These 2 people face jail time for refusing to be arrested for no reason?

If you go read the article, there was no record of any charges actually being filed, at least not in the police blotter that journalists check.

I suspect they were hoping it would go away quietly. I hope it doesn't.

 

[bluesjnr]

This doesn't make any sense.

That's the point of this thread

 

[Shadowdweller]

That case and similar ones are a bit different. Thats more like... hey wanna spend basically the REST OF YOUR LIFE in jail? Or give us some names, and maybe it'll just be like 20 years.

It's more than that. There have been allegations of emotional abuse, sleep deprivation; food/water and bathroom deprivation, lying about or downplaying the consequences of a confession. Standard interrogation techniques often focus on trying to undermine the subject's confidence and/or sometimes trying to present the interrogator inaccurately (i.e. "establish rapport") as some sort of friend.

It is not at all surprising that vulnerable populations - children, the mentally ill, the poor, drug users fall prey to such tactics just to get the unpleasantness to stop. One of the major reasons behind laws requiring council to be present if requested is so that those being interrogated have perspective and advocacy outside of the law enforcement bubble.

 

[jimbob]

How is "resisiting police" a crime? And no other charge?

These 2 people face jail time for refusing to be arrested for no reason?

If you go read the article, there was no record of any charges actually being filed, at least not in the police blotter that journalists check.

I suspect they were hoping it would go away quietly. I hope it doesn't.

That was something that happened in Ferguson PD.

I'm on my phone, so can't find where I quoted it in the thread about Ferguson PD report. Several people were arrested with "resisting arrest" given as the only reason.

 

[shemp]

‘He enjoys hurting people’: Cop punched people he pulled over, shared photos with ‘glee’ of those he injured

A former sheriff’s deputy in Kentucky who prosecutors say targeted people smaller and weaker than himself before he punched or assaulted them during routine traffic stops has been sentenced to a little over nine years in prison, according to a statement from the U.S. Justice Department.

A jury found Tanner M. Abbott of Danville, once a deputy at the Boyle County Sheriff’s Office, guilty of multiple charges including four counts of violating constitutional rights, a single charge of conspiracy and a single charge of falsifying records. Abbott, 31, was fired in 2021 after posting the identity of a confidential informant on Facebook upon discovering that person had criticized him on social media. He had first joined the sheriff’s office in 2017 after working as a pizza delivery driver, according to court records.

A series of formal complaints about Abbott’s conduct while he wore a badge prompted what would be a two-year-long investigation by the FBI and Kentucky State Police. He would not face charges until 2023. He was tried and convicted by a jury in March.

Some of the things he did:

During the arrest of one person identified only as W.W., the victim said that he had fully planned on cooperating with police when Abbott pulled him over but he grew “agitated” when Abbott “unnecessarily squeezed his testicles.”

Video evidence confirmed W.W. was peaceful during the arrest but as soon as he turned his head to say something to Abbott after his testicles were squeezed, Abbott punched him in the face. Investigators said they found the video and description of what happened to W.W. credible because several of Abbott’s colleagues also confirmed that Abbott frequently conducted “excessively intrusive” searches on male suspects’ groins as “a way of asserting dominance, particularly when those suspects were ‘mouthy’ or disrespectful.”

Investigators said they learned that multiple other men Abbott had arrested had lodged complaints about his excessive touching of their genitals.

To bolster the prosecution’s claims that Abbott had a long history of using excessive force, at trial prosecutors explained how in April 2020, for example, Abbott told a colleague via text that he had “‘beat[en] the f— out of'” a suspect who was being pursued by police during a car chase.

Prosecutors said that in November 2020, Abbott sent a booking photo to two colleagues that showed a suspect with “conspicuous” bruising and cuts near his eyes and nose. As one responding officer said it looked like the suspect “fell & hit a couple of a stairs going down” and another officer blatantly said it looked as if Abbott had punched the suspect twice, Abbott corrected him.

“3 times,” he allegedly wrote in November 2020.

He also texted his girlfriend at the time in January 2021 about a “brief scuffle” and then, unsolicited, sent her a “grisly photograph” of the suspect he “scuffled” with lying in a hospital bed.

The victim was bleeding “profusely” from several open wounds on his “heavily swollen face and vomiting into a bag,” prosecutors wrote last month.

There's a lot more, including sexual harassment and sexual assault, but we'll finish with this:

In calling for a sentence of anywhere from 151 to 188 months — or roughly 12 to 15 years — prosecutors said Abbott’s behavior was so disturbing that his own biological mother filed a complaint with the sheriff’s office about him and posted about his “brutality” online, court records allege.

Investigators said that “as a direct result of her criticism,” Abbott started targeting his mother for narcotics enforcement activity and then arrested her on narcotics charges in September 2021. Though there was no information to suggest that her arrest was illegal but investigators said evidence culled from Abbott’s phone made it clear that he targeted his mother for arrest because of what she said about him online.

Let's note, however, that he wasn't fired for any of these activities, but for this:

Despite this, he was not fired until prosecutors said his superiors discovered that Abbott had publicly identified a confidential informant on Facebook after that informant posted a critical comment about him online.

So apparently he got away with all of this until he did something that affected the department.

He got nine years. It isn't nearly enough.

 

[Babbylonian]

Sounds like the "thin blue line" was pretty damned thick for this guy.

 

[Donal]

Don't cops realize that ******** like this put them all in danger? Where are the "good apples" stopping this guy?

 

[bruto]

Don't cops realize that ******** like this put them all in danger? Where are the "good apples" stopping this guy?

I often wonder the same thing. In the world of nostalgia that probably never really existed much, one thinks of the friendly neighborhood cop, officer Clemmons or Andy Griffith, or the guy on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.

Unfortunately, I think too many cops subscribe to the culture that what makes them effective is privilege and fear, and the very idea of using the military term "civilians" emphasizes the "them or us" mentality that forgives the transgressions of their own more than the erosion of the barrier by subjecting their caste to the common rules.

 

[Donal]

I often wonder the same thing. In the world of nostalgia that probably never really existed much, one thinks of the friendly neighborhood cop, officer Clemmons or Andy Griffith, or the guy on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.

Unfortunately, I think too many cops subscribe to the culture that what makes them effective is privilege and fear, and the very idea of using the military term "civilians" emphasizes the "them or us" mentality that forgives the transgressions of their own more than the erosion of the barrier by subjecting their caste to the common rules.

I know I have posted it before, but this webcomic by a veteran goes into the overlap between the cultures of special forces and mercenary units, doemstic police forces, and doemstic terrorist groups. We're being trained to be subservient to a group of enforcers who live as their own prtoected class and live in some fantasy.

 

[Planigale]

I know I have posted it before, but this webcomic by a veteran goes into the overlap between the cultures of special forces and mercenary units, doemstic police forces, and doemstic terrorist groups. We're being trained to be subservient to a group of enforcers who live as their own prtoected class and live in some fantasy.

Thanks for the link.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Don't cops realize that ******** like this put them all in danger? Where are the "good apples" stopping this guy?

Committed to mental institutions in general, Cops have their ways to stop good apples.

 

[bruto]

I don't recall seeing that link before, so thanks.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Don't cops realize that ******** like this put them all in danger? Where are the "good apples" stopping this guy?

Bad apples spoil the entire barrel.

I am so sick of that expression used unironically.

What you do is throw out the barrel, get a new, clean one, and then make sure all the apples are good BEFORE you put them in.

 

[Donal]

Committed to mental institutions in general, Cops have their ways to stop good apples.

::Adrian Schoolcraft has enter the chat...and has been forcefull removed by Bloomberg's enforcers::

 

[Donal]

Bad apples spoil the entire barrel.

I am so sick of that expression used unironically.

What you do is throw out the barrel, get a new, clean one, and then make sure all the apples are good BEFORE you put them in.

I've brought that up before. I explained why you dump the whole barrel. It goes over about as well as can be expected.

 

[Darat]

Don't cops realize that ******** like this put them all in danger? Where are the "good apples" stopping this guy?

I often wonder the same thing. In the world of nostalgia that probably never really existed much, one thinks of the friendly neighborhood cop, officer Clemmons or Andy Griffith, or the guy on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.

Unfortunately, I think too many cops subscribe to the culture that what makes them effective is privilege and fear, and the very idea of using the military term "civilians" emphasizes the "them or us" mentality that forgives the transgressions of their own more than the erosion of the barrier by subjecting their caste to the common rules.

Sadly people forget what the adage means. When you have a bad apple in the barrel it spoils all the other apples, the good apples become bad apples by association. And that is what we see in police forces. There may well be cops that don't do anything bad themselves, but they don't stop the bad apples even when they know the bad apples are doing wrong, which means they are complicit in the wrongdoings, therefore they are also bad apples.

I am sure there are otherwise good people in all police forces but if they don't tackle their colleagues when they see or hear of any wrongdoing then they are bad police officers. And once that barrel is spoilt it will remain capable of turning good apples bad no matter if you have thrown out all the current bad apples.

To stop torturing the adage: Police forces should be policing themselves even tougher than they police the public, they should be squeaky clean internally, it means there must be proper checks built into the police procedures that stop police officers being able to do and get away with wrongdoing. Technology can now help this; it is entirely possible for example to create a system in which the complete "chain of custody" from arrest to court appearance can be reviewed from sources the police can't tamper with. Police on duty should be GPS tagged. There are lots of ways we can make it hard for bad apples to start to spoil the barrel, it is now a political question, are our politicians willing to do what is necessary?