When Defending Cops Becomes Impossible

[R011]

3 hours ago, Skywalkre said:

Shock, surprise.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-finds-civil-rights-violations-louisville-metro-police-department-and

A troubling quote from the report:

 

If correct, they need to disband that police force and form a new police serviec with few if any holdovers from the former force.  Are the county sherrifs or state police there much better?

[Murph]

Once more, look who runs these cities where there are issues.  I can almost 100% promise they are and have been run by and for Democrats for years if not decades.  It was not a problem when the PD bashed heads and violated rights so long as it profited their Democrat masters.  If you find corruption look to the Mayor/City Manager who hire the chief and they like how their PD works until it becomes politically expedient to bash the PD.  And as a result, the good cops are bailing left and right.  NYPD is in crisis right now, as are other PD's in Libtard land.  

[Tim the Tank Nut]

the Louisville Metro PD is "D" all the way along with the city leaders.

[rmgill]

One of the things is that the D's run the police into the ground then the DOJ comes in and has a Consent Agreemnt that basically hobbles the PD from doing any sort of aggressive policing in the dangerous areas. If the police arrest more of X race than Y race, then that runs afoul of the agreement and enacts penalties, so the police brass distinctly discourage police work unless it rises above a certain level of harm. This is where you also get police policy not to pursue suspects for minor offenses, never mind that fleeing over a minor offense could indicate something more substantive going on. 

[rmgill]

And as we saw, the situation in Seattle was improved right? 

[Skywalkre]

12 hours ago, Murph said:

Once more, look who runs these cities where there are issues.

That sheriff in AL a page back was R.  Mesa, a local suburb whose cops have been featured several times in this thread, has been run by Rs.  Arpaio, here in Maricopa years ago, basically ran his own agenda and leaned heavily R.

Maybe we should worry first and foremost about dealing with and replacing/firing/prosecuting bad LEOs than immediately pointing at political affiliations.

[rmgill]

1 hour ago, Skywalkre said:

That sheriff in AL a page back was R.  Mesa, a local suburb whose cops have been featured several times in this thread, has been run by Rs.  Arpaio, here in Maricopa years ago, basically ran his own agenda and leaned heavily R.

Maybe we should worry first and foremost about dealing with and replacing/firing/prosecuting bad LEOs than immediately pointing at political affiliations.

One guy. The D's seem to specialize in systemic corruption across the entire city. 

 

[Murph]

I never said it was 100% D's, but just the vast majority.  Also I know of a Sheriff (R) who has been indicted in Texas, he is a complete idiot (he was a Highway Patrol Sgt).  Bad cops are bad cops, but the vast majority come from jurisdictions run by Democrats.  Most, and I do mean most cops are basically good people doing a really rough, crappy job where people expect them to be law enforcers, social workers, counsellors, priests, paramedics, etc, etc.  

Also where are the people who are supposed to be the checks and balances of the police departments?  Where are the judges? Mostly just rubber stamping bad practices, Where are the supervisors?  Mostly doing what their political masters want. Where are the prosecutors?  Mostly just accepting whatever unethical crap the PD submits since they work for an elected boss who is probably the same political party as the Mayor, etc. And usually paid for by George Soros and his ilk. 

Who watches the watchmen?  Without accountability we are lost.  That is why I loved having the Ranger show up on one of my cases, because we were accountability partners.    

Look at Louisville PD, none of those who were supposed to be the checks and balances did anything to stop the rot.  So the officers did what the political masters wanted.  Suprise, suprise all Democrats.

[NickM]

12 hours ago, rmgill said:

One guy. The D's seem to specialize in systemic corruption across the entire city. 

 

And Sheriff Joe didn't seem so bad to me

[sunday]

18 minutes ago, NickM said:

And Sheriff Joe didn't seem so bad to me

Well, Leftist hate for a person on the Right is directly proportional to how successful and good that person is at his work.

[Murph]

That is true.  He made the poor criminals watch the weather channel, and eat sandwiches.  Boo Hoo.  That is not to say he might have done some things that were not ethical, but I loved his tent city.  

[DB]

With that LMPD report, you can't do zero tolerance policing if the police force itself is exempt.

But how good a police force are you going to have if it's politically prevented from doing its job in the first place?

From the description, though, this fits into the generally dysfunctional category (everyone is just incompetent and/or disaffected) rather than the deliberately corrupt. Which is what I was trying to differentiate from a couple of pages back.

[Murph]

Never ascribe to malice (or criminality) what can be explained by incompetence.

[rmgill]

7 hours ago, DB said:

From the description, though, this fits into the generally dysfunctional category (everyone is just incompetent and/or disaffected) rather than the deliberately corrupt. Which is what I was trying to differentiate from a couple of pages back.

How do you tell deliberate corruption as compared to gross incompetence? If the leadership desired greater crime and predation how would it look different? 



Take the case of Warren v DC. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia

Background[edit]

Warren, Taliaferro, and Douglas[edit]

In the early morning hours of Sunday, March 16, 1975, Carolyn Warren and Joan Taliaferro, who shared a room on the third floor of their rooming house at 1112 Lamont Street Northwest in the District of Columbia, and Miriam Douglas, who shared a room on the second floor with her four-year-old daughter, were asleep. The women were awakened by the sound of the back door being broken down by two men later identified as Marvin Kent and James Morse. The men entered Douglas' second floor room, where Kent forced Douglas to perform oral sex on him and Morse raped her.

Warren and Taliaferro heard Douglas' screams from the floor below. Warren called 9-1-1 and told the dispatcher that the house was being burglarized, and requested immediate assistance. The department employee told her to remain quiet and assured her that police assistance would be dispatched promptly.

Warren's call was received at Metropolitan Police Department Headquarters at 6:23 am, and was recorded as a burglary-in-progress. At 6:26, a call was dispatched to officers on the street as a "Code 2" assignment, although calls of a crime in progress should be given priority and designated as "Code 1." Four police cruisers responded to the broadcast; three to the Lamont Street address and one to another address to investigate a possible suspect.

Meanwhile, Warren and Taliaferro crawled from their window onto an adjoining roof and waited for the police to arrive. While there, they observed one policeman drive through the alley behind their house and proceed to the front of the residence without stopping, leaning out the window, or getting out of the car to check the back entrance of the house. A second officer apparently knocked on the door in front of the residence, but left when he received no answer. The three officers departed the scene at 6:33 am, five minutes after they arrived.

Warren and Taliaferro crawled back inside their room. They again heard Douglas' continuing screams; again called the police; told the officer that the intruders had entered the home, and requested immediate assistance. Once again, a police officer assured them that help was on the way. This second call was received at 6:42 am and recorded merely as "investigate the trouble;" it was never dispatched to any police officers.

Believing the police might be in the house, Warren and Taliaferro called down to Douglas, thereby alerting Kent to their presence. At knifepoint, Kent and Morse then forced all three women to accompany them to Kent's apartment. For the next fourteen hours the captive women were raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon one another, and made to submit to the sexual demands of Kent and Morse.

Warren, Taliaferro, and Douglas brought the following claims of negligence against the District of Columbia and the Metropolitan Police Department: (1) the dispatcher's failure to forward the 6:23 am call with the proper degree of urgency; (2) the responding officers' failure to follow standard police investigative procedures, specifically their failure to check the rear entrance and position themselves properly near the doors and windows to ascertain whether there was any activity inside; and (3) the dispatcher's failure to dispatch the 6:42 am call.

 

[DB]

This article shows how the political desire to score cheap points trumps tractional thought.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-65005957

If every police officer who was accused of misconduct was taken out of service, how long would it be before malicious complaints removed them all?

[Stuart Galbraith]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65015479

Women and children have been failed by the Metropolitan Police, with racism, misogyny, and homophobia at the heart of the force, a blistering review says.

Baroness Casey says a "boys' club" culture is rife and the force could be dismantled if it does not improve.

Her year-long review condemns systemic failures, painting a picture of a force where rape cases were dropped because freezers containing key evidence broke.

The Met's Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has apologised to Londoners.

He said: "It is ghastly. You sit down and read that report and it generates a whole series of emotions. It generates anger, frustration, embarrassment."

• Rape cases ruined, officer's beard cut... five findings from report

Baroness Casey was appointed to review the force's culture and standards after the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by serving police officer Wayne Couzens, in 2021.

During the course of her review, another Met officer, David Carrick, was convicted of a series of rapes, sexual offences and torture of women.

The report begins with a tribute to Sarah Everard's mother and a quote from her victim impact statement, given in court. It says "those crimes and those betrayals of trust" led to this review.

The 363-page report condemns the force as institutionally racist, misogynist and homophobic. Staff routinely experience sexism, it adds. There are racist officers and staff, and a "deep-seated homophobia" in the organisation.

In London, Baroness Casey says policing by consent - the idea ordinary people trust the police to act honourably and be held accountable - is broken.

Londoners have been "put last" and the city "no longer has a functioning neighbourhood policing service". The problem is more acute for ethnic minorities, the report found, warning "communities of colour are both over-policed and under-protected".

The report says leadership teams at the top of the Met have been in denial for decades, and there has been a systemic failure to root out discriminatory and bullying behaviour.

The force, it says, has failed to protect the public from officers who abuse women.

Asked if there could be more officers like Couzens and Carrick still within the force, Baroness Casey said: "I cannot sufficiently assure you that that is not the case."

 

They were discussing this on the BBC, and the words 'Disbandment' was used. As there are already several difference forces that operate within the MET area, it seems entirely viable to me to have more.

[DB]

I suspect that separating the national responsibilities from the Greater London policing responsibilities is the most likely "disbandment" option - it would follow the lead of the NCA and leave the Metropolitan Police with only the one job to do. this would mean taking the diplomatic protection team away, for example, and perhaps moving more stuff to the NCA.

Splitting it up further (geographically) would not help a great deal, unless you decided that throwing it all away and starting again would be a good idea, and that would be symbolic only - it's not like you can throw out all the police officers and expect the capital to not fall into anarchy overnight.

I think that they're going to have to take most of the recommendations on the chin and allow for further audits on the schedule suggested, but performance improvement measures are going to be politicised to beyond recall.

[rmgill]

Police departments organized by county. With a sheriff who is elected and beholden to the electorate. At least there its not a faceless bureaucrat.  
 

Larger cities have their own police departments with overlap with the counties. 

Edited March 21, 2023 by rmgill

[Stuart Galbraith]

With someone with police training, I can see why sherriffs would work, particularly in your country. It's just when you get to the level of police commissioners I can't see why dropping someone into a role they usually have no experience in is a good idea. We see many examples of the same all through Government.

This was an interesting perspective, MET arrested one of your countrymen, then lied about why they did it.

 

[Tim Sielbeck]

 

[rmgill]

7 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

With someone with police training, I can see why sherriffs would work, particularly in your country. It's just when you get to the level of police commissioners I can't see why dropping someone into a role they usually have no experience in is a good idea.

That's because it's NOT a good idea. 
 

7 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

We see many examples of the same all through Government.

Which is why it's often so broken. 
 

[Steven P Allen]

My wife likes to watch a show called On Patrol, a resurrected form of Live PD, which was killed by the aftermath of the BLM riots.

Anyway, they put camera men in patrol cars and follow some 8 or 9 departments from around the US.  There is a delay on the footage, so the broadcast segments are subject to editing and revision.  But they also show footage from other departments' body cams and so forth as "Crime of the Week" and other gimmicky additions to the basic fare.

A couple weeks ago,they showed footage of a chase involving darn near an entire small town department trying to corral a pickup on the rampage.  I don't remember what started the whole thing, but the result, after many rammings and other maneuvers, was the truck literally hemmed in on its side in a ditch, five patrol vehicles actually in contact with it, and officers running around waving their sidearms crazily.  One jumped out of his car and pointed his pistol in the general direction of the car but directly at the back of the head of one of his fellow officers.  Another jumped down into the ditch and held his pistol over his head pointing in the general direction of the truck's passenger window and who knows what else.

I am no LEO, but even I could see training failure after training failure in full color all over the screen.  Every member of that department should be fired and not allowed to work in LE without proof of competence and under close supervision.

Sadly, no such acknowledgement of the stupidity on display was made by the three expert LEOs who MC the show.

[rmgill]

Which is why Doughnut Operator is better. He's aware of and calls out when officers flag each other. Sketchy cross fire is the least of the descriptors. Don't expect that on TV. 

[Yama]

Wichita settles lawsuit in Andrew Finch killing, the nation’s first fatal swatting

I remember this case, it was one of the first in whole 'swatting' phenomenon which became a plague all over the world. Didn't know it was still ongoing.

Basically, although the main culprit was of course the idiot 'swatter' and he got an appropriate punishment, the police hardly looked good there. A guy is called to come out, he comes out as ordered, and is promptly shot. I guess they're easier to shoot when they're in the open?? I suppose the officer who fired the fatal shot was really lucky in that the 'swatter' got the majority of the blame and attention.

Edited March 25, 2023 by Yama

[Tim Sielbeck]