Reason Magazine - Hit & Run > More Problems in the FBI Crime Lab:
"Via the Washington Post, the FBI conceded two years ago that a bullet-matching technique it's been using for decades is faulty. Oddly, though, the agency doesn't feel it needs to notify the people the technique has put in prison."
Reason Magazine - Hit & Run > From the DWI Files:
"When James Bludsworth began to have a diabetic episode while driving, he pulled his truck over to the side of the road, and passed out behind the wheel. Police in Ozark, Alabama were called to the scene and, when Bludsworth didn't respond to orders to get out of the car, they used a Taser on him. They then arrested him and threw him in a jail cell on charges of resisting arrest and driving under the influence. Though Bludsworth blew 0.0 on a breath test and had no prior criminal record, those charges against him remain. The arresting officer will not be disciplined."
Reason Magazine - Hit & Run > Sleeping Man Tasered in His Own Home:
"Earlier this year, North Braddock, Penn. resident Shawn Hicks came back from a night out and plopped down on his own couch in his own home. Unfortunately, he failed to deactivate the silent alarm on his home security system. According to Hicks, two police officers responded to the alarm, entered his home, and woke him with a taser between the shoulder blades. When Hicks tried to explain that the whole thing was a misunderstanding, and that the officers were in his own home, they tasered him again. They next checked his wallet and ID, which confirmed his name and address. Then they tasered him again. The police then removed the taser pellets from Hicks' bloody back, refused to get him medical treatment, and arrested him for "being belligerent." They threw him in a holding cell until 5 am the next morning, when they released him without filing any charges.
You know what happened next. The police department suspended the officers who tasered Hicks without pay while they conducted a thorough investigation. The chief then had them arrested for assaulting Hicks with their tasers, falsely arresting him, and violating his civil rights. The two officers were fired from the police force, then charged, convicted, and given lengthy prison terms.
Just kidding. They were cleared of any wrongdoing."
From the comments, a couple reactions that got my attention:
"I am teaching my 4 children to distrust policemen, politicians, and priests."and...
"It's very simple. Here, I'll explain: Cops can do whatever they want, to whomever they want, for whatever reason they deem is appropriate.
If a someone who is not a police officer (a "civilian" in cop-speak) disagrees with someone who is a police officer, the police officer is always right. Always.
Police officers are not subject to repercussions for their actions, except on the rare occasion when a "rogue cop" is caught red-handed overstepping his bounds, and his superiors can't spin the story in his favor.
Police officers are always entitled to err on the side of safety- namely, their own safety- even if it means a few civilians might be injured, maimed, or killed. The ends justify the means when enforcing the law.
Whatever a police officer believes about a certain situation is the reality of the situation; dissenting views are not tolerated and are subject to punishment by the state.
...once again I manage to throw up a little in my mouth today, typing that."
Reason Magazine - Three Vetoes:
"In 2004, the California state senate created the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, a panel of current and former judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and police officials.
The legislators were concerned about the recent spate of DNA exonerations and death row releases, including at least six cases in California since 1989 in which someone had been sentenced to death then exonerated or acquitted in a new a trial.
...In 2006, the commission issued its recommendations. Three modest, sensible reforms made their way to the state legislature, and were passed by both the state's house and senate earlier this year. The reforms were backed by politicians from both parties. They were backed by both prosecutors and police officials who served on the commission. The reforms would have added some formidable defenses against wrongful convictions in California. Naturally, they were opposed by the state's police organizations. And so last month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed all three.
The first recommendation would have required that prosecutors who use jailhouse "snitches" corroborate snitch testimony with other evidence...
A 2004 study by Northwestern University of 111 death row exonerations since the death penalty was reinstated in 1973 found that the testimony of a jailhouse snitch played a role in 51 of the wrongful convictions...
The second reform would have required police to videotape interrogations in violent crime investigations. This too is a sensible, modest reform. Law enforcement advocates have opposed taping interrogations in the past by arguing that police officers sometimes use untoward or coercive tactics that while legal, might appear unseemly to jurors...
If that's the case, let prosecutors put on evidence explaining to jurors why such tactics are necessary, and why they won't lead to false confessions. Then let juries decide if such tactics are acceptable. A tamper-proof, thorough videotaping of all interrogations would not only discourage police misconduct while questioning witnesses, it would also cut down on false accusations of police misconduct. Of course, it would also prevent police from illegally beating confessions out of suspects...
The commission's third recommendation was aimed at fixing the problem of false eyewitness testimony, which has contributed in part or in whole to more than three-quarters of known wrongful convictions. This recommendation should have been even less controversial than the other two. It would have established a task force to look into eyewitness testimony, and set up a series of voluntary guidelines for the state's police departments to follow to ensure that police lineups aren't overly suggestive.
One recommendation, for example, was that the police officers administering photo or in-person lineups be unaware of the actual identity of the suspect, to prevent them from giving an eyewitness subtle (or not-so-subtle) clues.
...Former state Attorney General John Van de Kamp, who chaired the commission, told the San Francisco Chronicle that all three recommendations were "modest bills which were based on the best science and the best practices available.""
Reason Magazine - Cop Talk
"I crushed a dude's eye socket from repeatedly punching him in it and then I charged him with menacing and harassment (of me)."
"Seeing someone get Tasered is second only to pulling the trigger. That is money-puts a smile on your face."
Those are two of the statements posted by corrections deputy David B. Thompson of Multnomah County, Oregon to an Internet chat room. The inflammatory rhetoric sparked an ongoing investigation by the county sheriff's office, as well as reporting by the Portland Tribune and other local news outlets.
Thompson may also have filed a false police report to hide the eye-socket incident he brags about in his post. Although the sheriff's department can't comment on the investigation while it's still underway, he could be fired and prosecuted if he's found guilty.
Many police departments across the country have experienced similar bulletin board crises over the last few years, putting police officers' freedom of speech in conflict with the public's need to be protected from, well, cops who get off on using Tasers.
...In September, a Columbus, OH officer resigned after the Columbus Dispatch revealed that she and her sister had posted videos on YouTube blaming Jews, blacks, and immigrants for the country's problems. Susan L. Purtee was neither on duty nor in uniform when she said Jews "started to tell us—the gentiles—how to live, because if we did, they'd make a lot of money" and black people use "mangled English, dirty and filthy"; but neither was she entirely anonymous, since the sisters' website revealed that she was a law-enforcement officer. Purtee was reassigned to a desk job, and then resigned.
...Mary Shelton, the Californian proprietor of the weblog "Five Before Midnight", took a different view after she found herself targeted. In 2005 and 2006, the local activist (she started her blog to monitor how the police department would respond to the end of a court-ordered reform plan) got a spate of threatening and racist blog comments from people claiming to be police officers. "I felt really intimidated," Shelton says. "It makes you look at them differently—is it this police officer, that police officer? ...I think that's one of the most difficult things of all, that you can't put a face on it."
The threats escalated: Shelton recalls that one poster gave details of what she was wearing and what she was doing during the day. Finally, a comment—"The reason [cops] beat up the Mexicans is because it's a fiesta, you beat them and candy comes out"—led her to close comments.
Shelton doesn't know exactly what happened after the department investigated the threats. "The official word was discipline was given out," she says, but California confidentiality laws prevented her from learning more..."
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