Police Misconduct NewsFeed Update - First Week of May

Last month the National Police Misconduct News Feed captured 495 reported cases of police misconduct which averaged out to 16.5 cases per day, or 1 case every 87 minutes.

Those cases of police misconduct allegations involved 531 officers and 49 police chiefs. Of those, 156 were convicted, sentenced, fired, disciplined, or successfully sued as a result.

So far in the first 8 days of this month there have been 143 reported cases of police misconduct that involve 146 officers and 9 police chiefs or sheriffs and cost the lives of at least 16 people. If the trend holds, there would be 554 reported cases of police misconduct this month.

As was the last time I contemplated posting some of the worst stories recorded so far, I would be left with too many to fit in a reasonably sized post... so instead I'll show you some of the weirdest ones recorded so far this month:

Just Being Neighborly?
An Arlington Texas police officer is being investigated for allegations that he posted a fake Craigslist ad that offered up his neighbor's tether-ball set for free, telling readers of the site to just stop by and pick it up... all without the neighbor's knowledge or consent.

The problem now, even though they're pretty sure he did it, is that prosecutors have no idea what to charge him with, if anything at all.

Just What Is It With Cops And Sodomy?
Two Baltimore MD drug task force cops are accused of kidnapping an inner-city teenager, repeatedly threatening to sodomize him with a billy club over a 3 hour period in the back of a van in an attempt to get information about one of his alleged friends, and then dropping him off in the middle of a wooded area in the countryside in the rain after forcing him to take off his socks and shoes.

The boy made it to a gas station and called 911. Thankfully county deputies responded instead of Baltimore cops and he was driven home after he gave a statement. The department, in some weird attempt at defending the undercover officers' actions, claims that the task force has been ramping up anti-drug activities in that area.

...After a Story Like That, Maybe This Cop Has A Point.
A different Baltimore MD cop who is facing trial for shooting an unarmed suspect in the back and killing him when he ran away after being searched twice is now trying to get the trial moved out of the city, but not for the usual reason...

This particular case hasn't had any extraordinary coverage, especially with all the other reported cases of police misconduct there... So, instead of claiming that the jury pool is tainted because of press coverage of this case, his lawyers are claiming that Baltimore cops have such a bad reputation that there would be no way for their client to get a fair trial within the city.

Last month Baltimore ranked 6th in the top 10 worst cities for police misconduct with 6 reported cases, so far this month that city has been in the news 4 times for allegations of misconduct.

What Would He Do For A Klondike Bar?
A Chicago IL police officer is accused of stiffing a cab driver of an $8.00 fare. According to a complaint filed by the driver, when the officer got out of the cab without paying the driver asked for his money. In response the cop turned around, told the driver that he didn't owe him anything, then pointed his gun at the driver and challenged him to get out and see what would happen next.

What happened next was that the cabbie decided the fare wasn't worth it and watched quietly as the officer walked away and then passed out face-down in the middle of the street. The cabbie says that when he went to file a complaint, the officers at the station treated him like he was the criminal.

Now, to be fair, I should say that at least this cop didn't drive drunk and kill two people like another Chicago cop did recently. But I'd really hate to see what he would do when he doesn't get his free donut and coffee in the morning.

Drugs Are Bad, Mmkay?
A Twin Falls ID police officer and DARE instructor who visited local schools to tell children about the dangers of drugs is now facing five felony counts of obtaining fraudulent prescriptions of hydrocodone and oxycodone from a nurse while he was still an officer.

Do as I say, kiddies, not as I do.

Wanted: Experience Forcing Men To Wear Pink Panties...
One of Maricopa County AZ Sheriff Joe Arpaio's own officers was rounded up in a prostitution sting and arrested on several felony and misdemeanor charges...

No word yet on whether he's going to deport her or put her in the tent city and force her to march down the street in pink panties...

National Police Misconduct News Feed Criteria

Since there have been a few questions and concerns going back and forth about what stories should and should not go into the National Police Misconduct News Feed I decided that it might be a good time to go over the criteria I've developed for picking stories that qualify and then open it up to comments, questions, and suggestions.

First, any allegations, investigations into, criminal charges for, disciplinary actions on, lawsuits for, or judgments regarding misconduct by an active law enforcement officer while on-duty qualify for the feed.

Second, any story about an officer listed as a former officer but who was an active officer at the time of an alleged incident of misconduct but resigned or was fired afterward will be included in the feed.

Third, any story about off-duty criminal offenses alleged, charged, or convicted or any story about off-duty activities that would be construed as misconduct due to misuse of one's position as a law enforcement officer will also be included. These include incidents of theft, DUI, domestic violence, and assault.

Fourth, other stories may be included in the feed that relate to legal issues that affect police misconduct, such as department policy issues that obscure misconduct, legislative efforts that hinder efforts to prevent misconduct or handicap efforts to document or reduce misconduct, but will not be included in the statistics as a case of misconduct.

Fifth, when compiling statistics from the feed, duplicate stories about the same instance of misconduct and updates regarding a single incident of misconduct are removed from the offline database. So if you see multiple stories about a single incident, those will be addressed on the back-end of the statistic gathering process.

Finally, a note for those who wish to correspond with me via the Twitter feed, since it's used on other sites as a sort of news scroller I really try to limit personal communications and keep it reserved for stories of misconduct as much as possible... so please don't be offended if I don't reply publicly or if I choose to reply via a direct message instead of publicly.

With this in mind, I now open the floor for any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions... and, of course, I always welcome submissions for articles that you think I might have missed!

Thanks for reading!

Police Misconduct - Widespread or Deep-seated?

While the National Police Misconduct NewsFeed project has just begun to give us a glimpse at the possible breadth of America's police misconduct problem, it sometimes fails to show just how deep it runs perhaps.

Sure, when most people think of police departments where corruption and misconduct run deep, we think of big cities like Chicago, Oakland, New York, or Philadelphia. So, does that mean smaller cities and towns are exempt from the problem of deep-seated police corruption and a culture of misconduct?

Furthermore, when we see more than one story of misconduct being reported from a specific location, is this just coincidence, or is this indicative of a deeper, more disconcerting problem?

Still sound confusing? Then consider some of these cases, buried deep within the police misconduct news feed:

Spring Lake Police Department in North Carolina was told it's officers may no longer make felony arrests in 2007. But recently things have gone from bad to worse as two of it's officers have been arrested on multiple felony charges and the state's district attorney is promising even more arrests while also admitting that he has to dismiss a majority of the misdemeanor charges filed against suspects by the department as well.

To sum it up, the department is so corrupt, so inept, that it cannot be trusted to even make a simple misdemeanor arrest, effectively shutting it down and forcing an already thinly stretched county sheriff to pick up the extra slack.

Think of it... an entire department of bad or inept cops. Would that make you feel a bit less secure if you lived there? No? How about this...

Cuyahoga County Sheriff Gerald McFaul left the Sheriff's Department in tatters as he resigned under civil and criminal allegations of nepotism, political favoritism, and a publicized search of his office and home by FBI and IRS agents.

After his departure the county requested an audit of the department and has recently found out that nearly half of their officers were never given civil service exams but instead were hired at the recommendation of friends and family within the department... in fact, many were members of the sheriff's own family or recommended by them without any other real qualifications. But since they've been employed for so long, the county can't fire them.

Still not wondering how entire departments could be problematic like this? Here's some more...

Since the beginning of this year, 1/3 of Smith Township's police department, near Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, have been arrested on criminal charges that include burglary, assault, perjury, and drug possession. One officer alone was accused of assaulting a 59 year old man and later accused of attacking a 19 year old fast food worker while on duty, just because he thought the kid was talking about him.

Then last week they found themselves in the crosshairs of a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging excessive force was used when officers arrested a couple after a concert. Smith Township's residents have taken to describing their police officers as incapable of controlling themselves and scary...

Would you be scared living there too? No? Well how about here...

Greece New York's Police Department is missing most of it's command staff, including it's chief, as they are suspended pending criminal and civil charges... in fact, many of the department's police officers are too. Things have gotten so bad in Greece that state officials have come down to do a complete audit of the department that has been in the news, in a bad way. So often, in fact, that the city recently canceled a ceremony that was supposed to honor the department because, well, I guess there wasn't anything left to really celebrate about it.

Does a police department with nothing left to honor make you think twice about how your own police department might operate behind closed doors? No?

Then I have one more place to tell you about... the place where cops like those who end up listed on the news feed go...

Because, if you've ever wondered where all the cops fired for misconduct go when they try to find a new job in law enforcement, wonder no longer... they went to the Maywood Police Department in California where they nicknamed themselves "The Police Department of Second Chances"...

Well, looks like they'll be hoping for third chances now that the effort to cut costs by lowering standards and recruiting officers from disciplinary hearings instead of job fairs and academies has resulted in a blistering audit by the California State Attorney General who found an environment of gross misconduct and widespread abuses against the citizenry.

So, would you want to move your family to Maywood and trust their safety in the hands of a department full of "second chances"?

As I said, the news feed does give us a glimpse into how widespread the problem of police misconduct is... but, just how deep does it run in each police department? Maybe that will become more clear in time as well.

In the meantime, maybe we should all start asking ourselves this question about our own local police force... before your department ends up in my feed too.

National Police Misconduct Reporting Project - April 2009 Statistics

PLEASE NOTE: The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project and all associated police misconduct statistical reports have been moved to http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com

A Map of Police Misconduct

View 2009 April US Police Misconduct Reports in a larger map
UPDATE: Unfortunately, Google maps can only handle 200 entries per map, and since there are over 490 stories so far this month, I can't make an interactive map of police misconduct stories... I'll keep looking into it, but for the people who wanted to see this come out, I'm sorry.

I'm thinking of creating an interactive map of police misconduct cases in the US each month, but it's a gigantic pain in the butt and will take a lot of my time...

(Time is something which I barely have already between the working 2 jobs, taking care of family, this site, and the news feed... sleep and food happens every now and then too.)

So, the question is, does anyone think they would find this useful?

If so, does anyone know of an easy way to make a Google map like this?

Thanks!

NOTE: The above map is just a work-in-progress, it's not even close to being completed with close to 500 entries for this month alone pending so far.

From The Twitter Files - The Oddball Cops of April

As the end of April draws near I'm getting ready to compile the statistics from the first month of the national police misconduct tracking project.

In case you didn't know, that project, of which the National Police Misconduct News Feed on Twitter is but a by-product, is an attempt to gather statistics on the extent and types of police misconduct in the US, as well as localities where misconduct may be more prevalent than others.

As I compile these stories of police misconduct, I keep thinking about posting up the worst of them each week or so... but so many of them are so horrific to me that the lists each week would be too long for a mere blog post.

So, instead, I've decided to post a brief list of the weirdest stories I've seen this month and post them for your review.

I think that cop just gave you the finger, kid
A Tolleson Arizona police officer assigned to a local elementary school, where the grade-school kids are apparently so dangerous that he needed to cary his gun around, appears to have accidentally shot his own finger off while standing in the school doorway.


At the time there was no reported need for the officer to be, erm, fingering his weapon, and there was no word in the report on whether or not there were any small children nearby at the time. But the officer was last reported to be in the hospital while his department looks into the incident.

This cop certainly deserves the finger though!
Ever here that lame urban myth about police officers who were so corrupt that they would charge victims of police brutality with assaulting the cops fists with their faces?

Well, in Albany New York, they seem to delight in turning nightmarish myths into reality now that the Albany police department has charged a man with felony assault... are you ready for it?

...because an officer broke his finger while punching him in the face.

What does it take to be a police chief these days?
Well, for the city of Columbus New Mexico, apparently, it takes a bit of criminal experience. Apparently, after sifting through resumes of potential candidates, the city of Columbus New Mexico picked an interim police chief who might have intimate knowledge of the criminal mind.

To be precise, their new chief comes with a value-added criminal record that includes indictments for extortion in 1996 and allegations of stalking and harassment in 2001. If that's the kind of person they want leading their police, I hate to see the requirements for the officers that will serve under him.

Can you say "backfired"?
Philadelphia's police union was furious when a judge ordered a picture they put up of a recently killed officer because it gave the appearance of bias in his courtroom when the officer's accused killer was scheduled to appear.

So, the union has been demanding that he be fired and have even gone so far as to illegally remove his parking sign from the court parking lot in retribution. But, citizens don't appear to agree with the police union's sentiment that the judge offended everyone in the world by trying to keep the court impartial and have held protests in support of their besieged judge.

Speaking of unions...

Teamsters vs Police
No, this isn't a story of cops busting up union picket lines like back in the old days. This time, it was the story of the Teamsters and the Fraternal Order of Police who were in a pitched battle to represent Nashville TN police officers.

One enterprising Nashville Tennessee cop and Teamster's union representative was caught breaking into the rival union's camp for underprivileged children and installing cameras in an attempt to discredit the FOP in 2007.

Now he's facing 10 months in prison and a Shelby County deputy will be joining him for pleading to perjury in connection with the case.

Buy that cop a leash?
A Pittsburgh Pennsylvania police sergeant cost city $500,000 in a settlement against the city over an incident where the officer had choked a fellow officer last year. Now, you might think that, well, maybe the cop was told not to do that sort of thing again, or maybe disciplined, fired, or even prosecuted?

Nope... and now Sgt. Chokey McChoker been accused of choking yet another cop in new lawsuit against the city. If that's what this Sgt does to coworkers and subordinates, I sure hate to see what this cop does to citizens.

Will it really be that big of a surprise, Surprise?
The city of Surprise Arizona recently fired two of it's police officers but has remained very tight lipped about exactly why the two officers were fired. Of course, whenever there's a secret like that, the press gets interested. So, the local paper sued after the city denied a FOIA request for the disciplinary reports.

The police department and city officials have given a very odd reason for their refusal in that they say the reports will cause a "chilling reaction in the community's trust in their police department"... and the judge isn't buying it and has ordered the city to be a bit more precise about exactly why this case, while not associated with any known criminal charges, will chill the hot Arizona city to the bone.

The Peter Police Principle?
A Reno Nevada police detective who ran a program that travelled around different schools to warn teens about the dangers of drinking & driving was recently arrested... yep, you guessed it, for driving while under the influence.

Petered again?
A Manitowoc Wisconsin police officer who worked in the notorious anti-drug D.A.R.E program was convicted for, you guessed it again, being involved in an accident while under the influence. The chief won't disclose that officer's discipline, but we know it's not a dismissal.

A forfeiture fit...
Auditors recently began to question why a Minneapolis/St. Paul Minnesota joint gang taskforce used $16,000 of funds obtained by forfeiture in various drug raids to fund a "working vaction" trip to Hawaii. So, what did they do in response?

...fit to be tied?
They apparently held a secret, and quite illegal, meeting to discuss ways they could spin the story when they found out the local paper was getting ready to print a story about the whole scandal. I guess they decided to go for double or nothing.

Is sharing really caring?
Culpeper Virginia police officers sure love to share... in fact, after arresting a young man for a DUI, officers decided to look through the suspect's cell phone and found pictures of his girlfriend in the nude.

The officers called all their pals in the department to come take a look... and agreed they were so interesting they even called out over the radio and invited officers from other departments to come see.

Now those brilliant officers are faced with a lawsuit seeking $350,000 in damages which may jump now that the plaintiff's lawyers have discovered evidence that the images were distributed outside of the department.

Raising Arizona Florida -or- Chips Ahoy?

Deputy Chip's Crew

The wife of sheriff's Deputy Charles “Chip” Buckner III apparently thought it would be a lark to take his police cruiser out on the town with her mom and a 19 year old, um, friend.

Well, after swerving all over, and then pulling a u-turn in front of another cop, they got pulled over and arrested... for a lot more than just a joy ride.

It appears that Gail Buckner, the deputy's wife, was a felon and so was the 19 year old guy she and her mom were with. So, in addition to grand theft they also got busted for impersonation, felon in possession of a firearm, and firearm theft.

The hubby deputy has since resigned while the sheriff's department looks into how the whole debacle came about.

To Speak Ill Of The Dead Says Something Of The Living

As I progress through the police misconduct tracking project and review each day’s stories of police misconduct, one of the many things I think about as I enter each dismal story of police misconduct that occurs across the US into Twitter and into my tracking database is; “which one of these stories might grow legs and go national this time?”

It’s a difficult thing to figure out, after all, since each story is deserving of equally broad attention to me. Whether it’s a story about several officers being arrested on allegations of raping prostitutes, some of them children, in Memphis or a story about thousands of cases falling into question or being dropped because of multiple allegations against officers of lying on warrant applications for drug raids in St. Louis... all of these stories need to be heard and all of their victims are equally deserving of a loud voice.

When a story of police misconduct does hit the national mainstream media though, I try to figure out what it is about that story that sparked broad interest out of the multitudes of stories put out each day across the US. I do this because it helps me figure out just what the public is willing to hear and what they believe about the issue of police misconduct.

The latest story going national appears to be the story about an Erie Pennsylvania police officer who decided it would be great for laughs at a local bar to denigrate the dead, speak ill of those who mourned that homicide victim, and jest about tasering and clubbing suspects… and who didn’t think it was a problem until the video of his performance ended up on YouTube.

So concerned was he, that he and a fellow officer, the officer put in charge of the investigation into his performance on that video, went down to the workplace of the videographer’s relative to threaten him into a state of crying hysterics, saying if he didn’t do everything he could to make that video go away that there would be consequences for his relative.

Incidentally, it’s also interesting to me why the video itself is still getting all the national interest while the backstory of the subsequent efforts by the police to investigate and punish the person who took the video instead of investigating and disciplining the officer shown on the video.

Most curious to me, though, was why a story about an officer's words, his state of mind, would capture attention more than an officer's actual harmful acts of misconduct? After giving the matter some thought, I think I’ve happened upon an answer.

The video shows what we’ve only guessed at so far in the way it gave us a startling glimpse at how some police officers really think. It affirmed our inner-most fears about the police in this nation, that many really do consider everyone who isn’t a fellow law enforcement brother as an enemy, whether that person is a victim, an innocent bystander, or a suspect… It gave us notice that, to many of them, we are all the same to them and worthy of the same amount of respect, which is very little going by how he talked about the shooting victim and his grieving mother.

It made people pause, I think, to consider that… if this is the way this officer held a shooting victim and his mother in his regard, how might this affect how he treated others throughout his career? After all, if he considers the loss of a life and the grief of a mother in such disregard, how then does he treat the living?

More than this, I think, it makes people wonder how many officers like this might be working for their local police department and how many times their own city’s police officers might have spoken ill about their family or friends who have died or have been victimized in some way... or how they will treat them when they are suffering or how they will be described as they slowly die and officers stand around to watch.

I think that, perhaps, this video gives us the most startling, and frank, insight into the “Us vs Them” mentality many police officers have towards the general public to date… and I suppose that I shouldn’t be shocked that this glimpse was so disturbing as to merit national attention, especially since so many are still so ignorant of that mentality and the capacity for abuse that it nurtures.

Beyond this, though, are his actions after his public commentary in a public place went more public than he anticipated. His attempt to bully and threaten the family of the man who took the video was merely an effort to save his own job, in his own words in fact… which goes to show that not only does he hold others in such low regard as to mock their suffering, but that he holds others in such low regard that his job is more important than their rights and freedom.

So, why did the video make more headlines than the police response to that video? Maybe it's because both of the stories together would be too large a glimpse into an officer’s disturbing psyche when it seems that even this small picture into the mind of a problematic cop in a short video clip may already be too much for the public to stomach.

Injustice In Seattle Twitter Project Update

-Updated 9:17 04/14/09
Thought I would give everyone a quick update on the Twitter NewsFeed project.

If you didn't know, I'm using Twitter as a means to aggregate all news stories about police misconduct in order to have a handy reference to compile statistics on just how much police misconduct occurs in the US, where it occurs most often, and what types of police misconduct are most prevalent.

As a byproduct of this effort, you can follow our National Police Misconduct NewsFeed Twitter @Injust_Seattle in order to see how many stories about police misconduct are reported across the US each day... and the number of stories each day are much more than even I expected.

Before I give a peek at what numbers I've gathered so far this month, I want to thank some of the people who have been really supportive of this effort, they've given me the encouragement that helps me keep it going even though it's a lot of work each day.

Radley Balko at The Agitator was the first to actually mention the feed, that meant a lot, always a fan of his great work, thanks! A big thanks to Carlos Miller over at Photography Is Not A Crime for using the feed on his site, I didn't think that other sites would try to use it that way, what a great idea! Also, thanks to TJICistan for suggesting that people can get the feed via RSS if they don't like using Twitter.

On the legal side,Scott at Simple Justice gave it a big vote of confidence and this was seconded by Rick Horowitz at Fresno Criminal Defense! I really can't say how much support I've gotten from the criminal defense legal community, it's been overwhelming.

But, a big surprise, I even got some rare local votes of confidence for once! @WAKX who works at KBCS gave it some Twitter support and Lee over at HorsesAss even had something nice to say about the site and the Twitter Feed!!! Thanks guys!!!

(if I forgot anyone, I'm sorry, just remind me and I'll give you a shout out, I've been overwhelmed with all the support this effort has gotten, I'm very appreciative of it, it means a lot!)

So, this is what April is shaping up so far as the statistics are concerned... Each of these are individual and unique cases, duplicates and updates of original stories have been removed from the stats, so these are each stories that came out during the first 11 days of April:

In the first 11 days of April, 2009:
195 Cases were reported in the news.
146 Individual officers were convicted, arrested, charged, jailed, accused of, or sued for misconduct.
16 Different Police Chiefs were convicted, arrested, charged, jailed, accused of, or sued for misconduct.

That boils down to:
17.72 cases of misconduct reported in the news each day.
532 cases would be reported in the month of April if the trend continues.
6468 cases per year would be reported if the average holds...

Which would mean that there is a reported act of police misconduct every 81 minutes in the USA if the average is sustained.

Of the cases reported, the most common types of misconduct were:
1. 36 were reports of police brutality
2. 18 were reports of domestic violence
3. 17 were reports of criminal sex acts such as rape and child molestation
4. 12 were officer involved shooting incidents
5. 12 were cases of false arrest, wrongful detention, or wrongful deportation

The worst states for police misconduct in the first 11 days of April and number of cases in each:
1. Illinois with 16 cases
2. Pennsylvania with 15 cases.
3. Texas with 15 cases.
4. New York with 14 cases.
5. Florida with 13 cases.
(Washington state had 5 cases)

The worst cities for police misconduct in the beginning of April were:
1. Chicago - 8
2. Dallas - 5
3. Philadelphia - 5
4. Minneapolis - 4
5. Denver - 4
(Seattle had 2 cases)

I'll have more statistics after the end of the month and that will be followed up each month with up-to-date tallies. I'm hoping to do more with it, but it's been a lot of work so far so I'll need to find some better ways to compile the information I collect before I do anything like detail officer names or anything like that.

So, stay tuned, and let me know what you think!

Thanks!