Police abuses

[Vladimir]

Recordings are a good idea and usually end up exonerating the officer in question. So much so that if he did any research on it, the results would shake CR out of his frenzy. But no, in a country as large and diverse as the U.S., recording isn't mandatory everywhere.

Banquo, please don't base your perceptions of U.S. law enforcement on law enforcement dramas. As a former instructor of mine says: "Don't waste your time with novels."

[Banquo's Ghost]

Banquo, please don't base your perceptions of U.S. law enforcement on law enforcement dramas. As a former instructor of mine says: "Don't waste your time with novels."

Don't worry, I have no intention of doing so. However, since I have never seen the inside of a US police station (nor have any plans in that direction) crime drama provides at least a starting point to ask something that bothered me as I read this thread.

Oh, and your instructor was utterly wrong about novels - but that's a different thread.

Thanks for the information.

[Crazed Rabbit]

So, what do you call it when a person says you won't have your children returned to you unless you give them money? Kidnappers, right?

Or, in one Texas town, police:

TENAHA, Texas (CNN) -- Roderick Daniels was traveling through East Texas in October 2007 when, he says, he was the victim of a highway robbery.

Police in the small East Texas town of Tenaha are accused of unjustly taking valuables from motorists.

The Tennessee man says he was ordered to pull his car over and surrender his jewelry and $8,500 in cash that he had with him to buy a new car.

But Daniels couldn't go to the police to report the incident.

The men who stopped him were the police.

Daniels was stopped on U.S. Highway 59 outside Tenaha, near the Louisiana state line. Police said he was driving 37 mph in a 35 mph zone. They hauled him off to jail and threatened him with money-laundering charges -- but offered to release him if he signed papers forfeiting his property.

...

Texas law allows police to confiscate drug money and other personal property they believe are used in the commission of a crime. If no charges are filed or the person is acquitted, the property has to be returned. But Guillory's lawsuit states that Tenaha and surrounding Shelby County don't bother to return much of what they confiscate.

...

Jennifer Boatright and Ron Henderson said they agreed to forfeit their property after Russell threatened to have their children taken away.

Like Daniels, the couple says they were carrying a large amount of cash --- about $6,000 -- to buy a car. When they were stopped in Tenaha in 2007, Boatright said, Russell came to the Tenaha police station to berate her and threaten to separate the family.

"I said, 'If it's the money you want, you can take it, if that's what it takes to keep my children with me and not separate them from us. Take the money,' " she said.
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The document Henderson signed, which bears Russell's signature, states that in exchange for forfeiting the cash, "no criminal charges shall be filed ... and our children shall not be turned over" to the state's child protective services agency.

Maryland resident Amanee Busbee said she also was threatened with losing custody of her child after being stopped in Tenaha with her fiancé and his business partner. They were headed to Houston with $50,000 to complete the purchase of a restaurant, she said.

"The police officer would say things to me like, 'Your son is going to child protective services because you are not saying what we need to hear,' " Busbee said.

CR

[Strike For The South]

To be fair, this was only done to minorites and "people whom ain't from 'round here are ya boi" So it doesn't count.

[Husar]

Well, my personal opinion is that driving around with lots of jewelry and 8,500$ cash is pretty nuts anyway, much safer to have the money in your bank account and let the banks handle the payment process. Of course that way you support the New World Order and the banks will take your money away and control your life but even when you pay cash and drive around in Texas, the fuel stations (and police) do the same to you.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Or, in one Texas town, police:

That's just third world. I know America likes states rights, county rights, much autonomy for local law enforment. But this is just insane. Civilized America should clamp down on this.

Kidnapping they say. I call it sheer piracy. Aye, these scally wags should paint a Jolly Roger on their police vehicles when they go buccaneering passing-by landlubbers.

[InsaneApache]

Unbelievable.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Criminals pretending to have badges:

Deputies said two suspects armed with a long-barrel weapon burst into a south Orange County home this morning and shot one of the residents to death.

Orange County Sheriff's Office investigators said the victim is a 38-year-old man who lived in the residence at 1901 Rose Boulevard. They have not released his name.

Preliminary reports show the suspects knocked on the door and yelled "Police, open the door!" sometime after 1 a.m. The suspects rushed inside and fatally shot the victim, reports show.

In Oregon, an excessive force cop gets a 'cop of the year award' - I guess that's what they reward.

More on the theft-by-cop mentioned above (an earlier article).

Law enforcement authorities in this East Texas town of 1,000 people seized property from at least 140 motorists between 2006 and 2008, and, to date, filed criminal charges against fewer than half, according to a review of court documents by the San Antonio Express-News.

Virtually anything of value was up for grabs: cash, cell phones, personal jewelry, a pair of sneakers, and often, the very car that was being driven through town.
...
Some lawmakers, fed up with calls from irate constituents, say enough is enough. Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, said the state’s asset forfeiture law is being abused by enough jurisdictions across the state that he wants to rewrite major sections of it this year.

“The idea that people lose their property but are never charged and never get it back, that’s theft as far as I’m concerned,” he said.

Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, believes some law enforcement agencies in his cash-strapped district in the Rio Grande Valley have become so dependent on the profitable seizures that they routinely misapply the state’s civil forfeiture law.

“In a lot of cases, they’re more focused on trying to find the money than in trying to find the drugs,” he said.

That means law enforcement agencies in the Valley tend to target vehicles heading south into Mexico rather than northbound cars, Hinojosa said, because the southbound vehicles are more likely to be transporting cash — the profits from the drug trade — as opposed to just the drugs.

In 2008, three years after stripping a man of $10,032 in cash as he drove south along U.S. 281 to buy a headstone for his dying aunt, Jim Wells County officials returned the man’s money — and the county then paid him $110,000 in damages as part of a settlement. Attorney Malcolm Greenstein said criminal charges never were filed against his client, Javier Gonzalez, nor any of the dozens of people whose records he reviewed. People were given the option of going to jail or signing a waiver, Greenstein said. Like Gonzalez, most signed the waiver.
...
But in Tenaha, a town of chicken farms that hugs the Louisiana border, critics say being a black out-of-towner passing through with anything of value is seen as evidence of a crime.

Tenaha Mayor George Bowers, 80, defended the seizures, saying they allowed a cash-poor city the means to add a second police car in a two-policeman town and help pay for a new police station.

“It’s always helpful to have any kind of income to expand your police force,” Bowers said.

A Missouri cop strangles and knees a suspect in the neck - after he's already been handcuffed.

Watch the videos.

Geoffrey Alpert is a professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina. For the past 25 years, his research has focused on high-risk police activities, specializing in use of force.
...
"I don't know how you'd make an argument to be normal, for that activity to be justified. There's no reason for it. Even if he was fighting, even if he were wrestling, you don't put a knee in someone's neck," Alpert said.
...
Neither Lee's Summit police officials nor Heil wanted to talk on camera, but in a statement the department said, "The use of force was deemed appropriate, and the actions of the officers were considered appropriate, as well, based on training and procedure."

EDIT: Another story. This time a town threatens a business because the manager, legally, doesn't talk to the police.

CR

[Vladimir]

Silly Rabbit, you're doing the same thing the anti-gun nuts do to argue against firearm possession.