Gangsters in Blue

In the midst of what Miami-Dade police cynically call an investigation into whether cops unlawfully shot and killed two men and injured one woman, those same two cops are back on the street where they can shoot even more unarmed people in cars- and they did.

On November 12, 2007 Officers Michael Mendez and Ryan Robinson killed Frisco Blackwood and Michael Knight, and injured a female passenger, in a barrage of bullets targeting the SUV in which they sat. Less than 30 days later, the pair was at it again, this time shooting, but fortunately not killing, Robert De Armas, who was in a car as well, on 23rd St. and NW 18th Ave.

This means that two police officers, under an ongoing investigation ostensibly designed to determine if they murdered two civilians, were allowed back on patrol, this time under the auspices of an aggressive police program, the RID, commonly known as the jumpouts.

The development is disturbing on many levels, none so more than this: Miami-Dade blatantly disregards community will, outrage and the possible wrongdoing by officers in the line of duty. Top brass continues blind support of cops who commit wrongdoings under the color of law, as the Black community continues to bury young men killed at the hands of police.

The community is outraged and hurt by the rash of police shootings and the police responds by putting the cops at whom the outrage is directed back on the streets in our community. During an ongoing investigation of wrongdoing.

The harsh truth is that there is no credible investigation of any of the deaths at the hands of police being conducted either by Miami-Dade police or the State Attorney’s office. They are not investigating Christopher Villano, the cop who killed BG Beaugris in North Miami. Nor the cops who tased, kicked, beat and hogtied Roger Brown prior to his death. And, obviously, there is no serious investigation of Michael Mendez and Ryan Robinson, together shooting at Michael Knight and Frisco Blackwood over 20 times.

It appears as if when a cop is involved in the shooting of unarmed Black people, a shooting invoking controversy and outrage in the broader community, Miami-Dade police take those cops off of uniformed duty and place them, instead, on undercover duty, as jumpouts, in a Black or Latino community, from where they can shoot, and possibly kill more Blacks and other people of color.

The Black and broader community must understand that when the police say they are conducting a thorough investigation of their own, they are lying. There is no good faith investigation or even intent to conduct a thorough investigation. Now it is evident that there is not even an attempt to pretend as if there is an ongoing investigation.

Equally as important, after police complete an investigation of other police and clear them of all wrongdoing, they are lying.

We are not children and have no interest in being humored or patronized. The police regularly lie to us about fair and thorough investigations, and that practice must stop. Instead of lying before the community and the media about intentions to conduct an investigation, the police should simply state the truth: police are allowed to shoot Black people virtually at will, and, therefore, there is no need for an investigation.

This honesty will improve police-community relations as the community realizes the police are no longer lying to us. In addition, the move will save countless administrative hours and money currently wasted on fake investigations and meaningless reports on behalf of the police and the state attorney’s office.

In the mean time, there is a fundamental unfairness in forcing members of the Black community to pay taxes for a police force unwilling to adhere to our demands and cries. The fundamental power relationship between the police and the community is askew. The Black community must, therefore, develop alternate means of securing our communities, including against out of control police forces with no respect for our rights.

Forward,

Max Rameau
CopWatch
a project of the Center for Pan-African Development

The feds are declaring war on Appalachia by designating 65 counties as constituting a “High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area“. It has long been known that marijuana cultivation and sale in that area is big business, bringing in over $4 billion annually from top dollar east coast markets to one of America’s most impoverished regions. With a war on terror going on, targeting poor, rural people is a curious allocation of scarce funds.

Now, for the feds to summon this level of coordination among the alphabet soup of local, state, and federal law enforcement organizations, they must perceive a huge problem. Usually, these kinds of major drug economies revolve around violence: brutal drug cartels that paralyze communities with fear, leave a trail of bodies, and force helpless local communities to appeal for federal intervention. So is that the case?

No, the problem is that the trafficking is too peaceful:

In the official “Appalachia HIDTA FY 98 - Threat Abstract,” the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) states that Appalachia warrants a federal crackdown because “in this tri-state area financial development is limited, poverty is rampant, and jobs are few. Marijuana has become a substantial component of the local economy, surpassing even tobacco as the largest cash crop. This has contributed to a high level of community acceptance of marijuana production, distribution, and consumption. Many honest local merchants do not recognize signs of illegal drug enterprises and in effect help launder drug proceeds. In such an environment eradication and interdiction efforts are difficult, as is obtaining intelligence, indictments, or an unbiased jury.” In other words, people are poor, locals are not that concerned about residents who are doing this, and people are not informing on their friends and neighbors to the extent that the government desires.

The problem is too much community! Yet again, government targets organic human association, seeking to replace it with an occupation culture of snitches, arbitrary searches and seizures, and the impunity of bureaucratic carpetbagging. They will tear whole communities to shreds - all in the name of keeping people from getting high.

However, it sounds like these kinds of invasive enforcement programs have resulted in a citizen backlash in the past:

In Northern California, residents have turned out to oppose aggressive marijuana eradication, because of the negative community impact it has. Forming “Citizens Observation Groups,” locals have documented government helicopters violating federal laws on flying altitude; environmental regulations; endangered species protection; and kept track of illegal search and seizure operations including the number of children that have been terrified by the men with face paint and automatic guns. More importantly, by documenting police actions, they have been able to raise awareness within their own communities and present a united front to their local government. This united front eventually lead to county supervisors voting to reject funding for the program.

If there was ever a countereconomic battlefield worth fighting on, this is it. We left libertarians should keep an eye on this issue.

Radley Balko has just posted what I think is the most moving essay yet on the Cory Maye case and the drug war in general (if you think it’s worth sharing, digg it). Getting beyond the legalities, moral appeals, and outrage, Balko simply recounts how the drug war cost a good cop his life and a great father his family and freedom. When you feel like the cards are stacked against any chance of decency in this world, read this post and dig deep down for the strength, not simply to vote for the right politicians and see the right policies enacted, but to make your neighborhood a better, safer, more humane place.

This is a letter to the editor, so factor the one-sidedness into your outrage-o-meter.

But if true, it seems to be a pretty severe overreaction from local authorities.

Cops in America are heavily armed and trained to be bullies. In order to get control of situations that they forced their way into, they routinely hurt people, use force first and ask questions later, and pass off even the most egregious violence against harmless or helpless people as self-defense or as the necessary means to accomplish an unnecessary goal. In order to coerce compliance with their arbitrary orders, they have no trouble electrifying small children, alleged salad-bar thieves, pregnant women, or an already prone and helpless student who may have been guilty of using the computer lab without proper papers on hand. They are willing to pepper spray lawyers for asking inconvenient questions and to beat up teenaged girls for not cleaning up enough birthday cake or being out too late at night. They are willing to shock you and leave you lying on the side of the highway in order to make sure they can serve you with a dubious traffic ticket. It hardly matters if you are an 82 year old woman supposedly benefiting from a care check, or if you are sound asleep in your own home, or if you are unable to move due to a medical condition. It hardly even matters if you die. What a cop can always count on is that, no matter how senselessly he escalates the use of violence and no matter how obviously innocent or helpless his victims are, he can count on his bosses to repeat any lie and make any excuse in order to find that Official Procedures were followed. As long as Official Procedures were followed, of course, any form of brutality or violence is therefore passed off as OK.

One increasingly popular means for out-of-control cops to force you to follow their bellowed orders is by using high-voltage electric shocks in order to inflict pain.Tasers were originally introduced for police use as an alternative to using lethal force; the hope was that, in many situations where cops might otherwise feel forced to go for their guns, they might be able to use the taser instead, to immobilize a person who posed a threat to them or to others, without killing anybody in the process. But in practice, police culture being what it is, any notion of limiting tasers to those situations very quickly went out the window. Cops armed with tasers now freely use them to end arguments by intimidation or actual violence, to coerce people who pose no real threat to anyone into complying with their instructions, and to hurt uppity civilians who dare to give them lip. Among civilized people, deliberately inflicting severe pain in order to extort compliance from your victim is called torture; among cops it is called pain compliance and is considered business as usual. So shock-happy Peace Officers can now go around using their tasers as high-voltage human prods in just about any situation, with more or less complete impunity. In comments at The Agitator, Robert, referring back to John Gardner’s taser assault on Jared Massey, gets the situation exactly right:

Seriously though, I’m much more worried about being tased by some overzealous cop that has had a bad morning than I am about being assaulted by a real criminal. Maybe I just read this blog too much.

MikeT makes a good point. Take the video of the guy stopped in the construction zone. Granted, arguing with a cop is stupid (you’ve got a pretty good shot at getting tased), but how would people have reacted if the guy had turned around and the cop took out his nightstick and gave the guy a couple of kidney shots with it?

Cops’ contemptuous indifference to anything other than their own domineering control of the situation, and their hair-trigger readiness to start shocking in order to coerce compliance, has led to predictable results over and over again. In California, a gang of three cops pepper-sprayed, and tasered, and beat the hell out of a 17-year-old non-verbal autistic teenager for failing to obey commands that he didn’t have the linguistic capacity to understand. In Alabama, a gang of cops tasered a man who was unable to respond to their commands because he was half-conscious from a diabetic episode. And this week, in Wichita, Kansas, a gang of cops forced their way into a deaf man’s house, found him coming out of the bath wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, and promptly immobilized him with painful electric shocks for failing to follow bellowed commands that he could not hear. At the time he was shocked, Donnell Williams was holding his hands to his ear and yelling I can’t hear!

As always, The Incident Is Being Investigated. But the people doing the investigating are more cops, i.e., people who have a personal and professional interest in making sure that they and their buddies aren’t subject to any particular kind of standards whatsoever in the use of force. Here’s how that’s going:

Officers were worried about their own safety because at the time it appeared Williams was refusing to obey their commands to show his hands. That’s when they shot him with a Taser.

Deputy Chief Robert Lee of the Wichita Police Department says, This one occurred on the worst of calls, that being a shooting. The first few minutes getting control of the scene are very, very important.

Once the facts were all sorted out, officers repeatedly apologized to Williams. Police wish it never happened, but with the information they had at the time, their choices were limited.

Do I wish there would have been some way they were notified in advance this gentleman was hearing impaired? I certainly do. No one is happy with the way it worked out, says Lee.

—Michael Schwanke, KWCH (2007-12-03): Hearing Impaired Man Tased by Police

In other words, nothing is going to happen as long as the cops can manufacture the flimsiest possible excuse that a half-naked man with no pockets or anywhere else to conceal a gun might be posing a threat to the safety of several cops with their weapons already drawn, or that they just had no way of knowing that a man is deaf when he’s pointing to his ears and yelling I can’t hear! Gosh but the boys in blue feel mighty sorry, but of course they’re not going to do anything about the fact that they tortured an innocent man over a complete mistake.

In real life, outside of government power trip la-la land, if you or I did something like that we would be expected to take some minimal responsibility and pay to make it right for the victim of our fuck-up, even if our options seemed mighty limited at the time. But since these guys are on the State’s official goon squad, some crocodile tears and an Oops, my bad will have to do.

(Story via Radley Balko 2007-12-04.)

Further reading:

• Radley Balko, The Agitator (2007-12-04): Taser files
• GT 2007-11-30: Oops. Our bad.
• GT 2007-11-11: Taser first, ask questions later
• GT 2005-04-26: Peace Officers

ATTN: Agitator

Of all the tasing stories, this one takes the cake:

Donnell Williams had just gotten out of the bath tub, wearing only a towel around his waist, when he turned the corner to see guns pointing right at him.

“I ain’t never been so scared,” says Williams.

Police forced entry into Williams home while responding to a shooting, but it turned out to be a false call. They had no idea at the time the call wasn’t real and that Williams is hearing impaired. Without his hearing aid he is basically deaf.

“I kept going to my ear yelling that I was scared. I can’t hear! I can’t hear!”

Officers were worried about their own safety because at the time it appeared Williams was refusing to obey their commands to show his hands. That’s when they shot him with a Taser.

Deputy Chief Robert Lee of the Wichita Police Department says, “This one occurred on the worst of calls, that being a shooting. The first few minutes getting control of the scene are very, very important.”

Once the facts were all sorted out, officers repeatedly apologized to Williams. Police wish it never happened, but with the information they had at the time, their choices were limited.

We will pause briefly so you can all make jokes about the ‘loaded weapon’ beneath the towel.

Now, in all seriousness, something has gone very wrong when your “limited choices” as a police officer are:

A.) Shoot the startled naked deaf homeowner shouting “I can’t hear!”

B.) Taser the startled naked deaf homeowner shouting “I can’t hear!”

Granted, I am not a police officer, and I have a growing contempt for police based on what I read in the news and my own personal experiences, so I concede that I am not an expert. But even with my lack of expertise, I recognize that in that situation, THERE HAS TO BE A THIRD FUCKING OPTION.

Jeebus.

CopWatch and other community organizations and individuals are holding a press conference to condemn the beating of 74 year old Bernie Dyer by the Miami Beach Police. The beating takes place shortly after Miami-Dade police killed four (4) unarmed black men in 19 days. The press conference will be held on Wednesday, December 5, 2007 at 2:00pm in front of Bernie’s apartment building, 1745 Marseille Dr. in Miami Beach.

On Friday, November 23, Dyer was suffering a mental health crisis in his Miami Beach apartment. When his family heard the news, they came to explain to police Dyer’s history of mental health crisis, dating back to his service in Vietnam. The family explained Dyer was of no threat to anyone, and that if allowed, at 74 years old, he would eventually wear himself out and fall asleep. After assurances that the police understood the situation, family members left the scene. Police then lobbed several canisters of tear gas into the one bedroom apartment before storming in and beating Bernie Dyer.

After more than a week, Bernie Dyer remains in a coma at Mt. Sinai Hospital. At the press conference, Bernie’s family will speak about his condition and prognosis.

After organizing in Harlem, NY, Bernie Dyer moved to Miami in the mid 1960s, eventually directing the Liberty City Community Council, an organization financed by the Christian Community Service Agency, located on 62nd St. and NW 12th Ave. in the heart of Liberty City. Dyer played a significant role in restoring calm following civil unrest in 1968 and 1980. His role in calling out injustice was so controversial that his family was forced to flee the country, briefly, in order to avoid persecution by the police and others in positions of power.

Dyer also played a significant role in building the community, helping to found a number of organizations, including the Martin Luther King Economic Development Corporation.

The attack on Bernie Dyer raises serious questions about the actions and attitudes of police, such as why Miami Beach police required several cans of tear gas, a swat team and physical brutality to “subdue” a 74 year old man; what are appropriate responses to people enduring a mental health crisis; and is this beating part of a larger trend of police abuse, one which already has taken the lives of 4 black men in 19 days in Miami-Dade County.

Several community members and organizations will speak at the event.

To reach the location from Miami, take 79th St. across the causeway and into the Normandy Isles neighborhood. At the light, turn LEFT at Esplanalde and then another LEFT at Marseille Dr.

forward,

Max Rameau
CopWatch
a project of the Center for Pan-African Development

A man was Tasered by Notts police last week. Is this a portent of things to come?

Shocking

On Tuesday November 27, Nottinghamshire Police used a Taser stun gun on a man in Beeston. Although it has attracted only limited interest, it could be an important development. Tasers have recently been introduced to the police arsenal in the UK, having been widely used by police in the US and Canada for some time. This happened with minimal public debate, despite increasing concerns about their use across North America. Currently restricted to armed response officers there are calls from both senior and rank and file police officers for their use to be greatly expanded. They certainly aren’t going to go away any time soon.

According to the Evening Post, Notts police were called to reports of a man acting erratically outside the Natwest on High Road, Beeston at 11.30am. The Post also indicates that there was a suggestion the man might have been carrying a firearm, however it is now clear the man did not have a gun and there is little in the article to indicate on what basis such suspicions might have arisen. The various eyewitness reports certainly indicate erratic behaviour, but if anything make the presence of a gun seem unlikely. One account has the man shouting, “Call the police,” while another has him pushing people about threatening to “knock you out.” Hardly behaviour which would indicate he was armed. [http://tinyurl.com/3c9fb3]

In the aftermath of the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes by armed police in London, it would be naïve to accept the police’s account of events without asking some probing questions. It is to be hoped that there is a thorough, independent investigation, but don’t hold your breath. Nor should you expect much to happen if it turns out the police were out of line. It emerged in November that a Leeds resident was tasered twice after suffering hypoglycaemic attack on a bus shortly after July 7, 2005 when police mistook him for a suicide bomber because he “looked Egyptian.” Despite an inquiry by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, neither the officers nor the West Yorkshire force have faced charges, while the two officers involved have thus far avoided any internal disciplinary action. [http://tinyurl.com/38otun]

While the individual’s experience was no doubt painful, some proponents of Tasers would argue that he was actually lucky. Perhaps the main argument in support of Tasers is that they are preferable to the alternative of lethal force. Certainly it’s true that stunning somebody with 50,000 volts is not as likely to kill them as a good old-fashioned volley of hot lead, but there is nevertheless a long and growing list of people who have died after being tasered.

Silja Talvi argued in November 2006, “Although the company spins it otherwise, Taser-associated deaths are definitely on the rise. In 2001, Amnesty International documented three Taser-associated deaths. The number has steadily increased each year, peaking at 61 in 2005. So far almost 50 deaths have occurred in 2006, for an approximate total of 200 deaths in the last five years.” [http://tinyurl.com/2sewbu] Indeed, in October of this year, Amnesty International called for a moratorium on Taser use after two people in Canada died after being stunned in the space of one week. [http://tinyurl.com/289wt5] These are disturbing trends and should give pause for thought to anybody glibly dismissing the weapons as “non-lethal.”

It should be stressed that “Taser associated deaths” are not clear-cut instances of Tasers causing death, rather they represent the cases where people have died shortly after being shot with one of the devices. It would be possible to challenge the figures on this basis, but to do so does not detract from the very real questions they raise. Coroners are often wary of attributing deaths to the weapons and usually prefer to equivocate on reasons when there is any grounds for doubt. This is unlikely to be helped by the minimal scientific literature on the dangers stun-guns pose. In 2004, Amnesty noted that despite being widely deployed by police forces around the world “there has been no rigorous, independent and impartial study into the use and effects of tasers, particularly in the case of people suffering from heart disease, or under the influence of drugs.” [http://tinyurl.com/74dds]

Study or not, there are real concerns that stun-guns may be even more lethal when used against people under the influence of drugs. Research at the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Science and Technology laboratory (Dstl) was unable to rule out an increased risk of heart failure following Taser use amongst such individuals. This, Nick Lewer and Neil Davison note, is particularly “significant given that, during the year-long trial in the UK, over 50% of Taser victims were under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Interim results of a US study of over 21,000 uses of various ‘less-lethal’ weapons, including the Taser, have showed that 23% of victims were under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol.” [http://tinyurl.com/279njp]

The threat to life posed by the weapons is such that in 2005, Taser had to concede that they were not in fact “non-lethal.” The decision to drop the label in favour of the more equivocal term “less lethal” came following moves by the attorney general of Arizona, where Taser is based, to begin investigations into the company’s claims about safety studies it carried out on its products. They also made a number of other changes to the information they provide on the weapons, for instance dropping the phrase “leave no lasting after-effects” and replacing it with the claim that they “are more effective and safer than other use-of-force options”. [http://tinyurl.com/yrwyf9]

Quite apart from the threat they pose to people’s lives, Taser usage in the US and Canada where they are already widely deployed has displayed a worrying “mission creep.” While rhetorically usually posited as an alternative to traditional firearms, the “non-lethal” or “less lethal” appellation associated with the weapons appears to lower the threshold on the use of violence. Police officers have, in short, used Tasers in any number of situations where they would never dream of using live ammunition.

An Amnesty International report in 2004 argued that “far from being used to avoid lethal force, many US police agencies are deploying Tasers as a routine force option to subdue non-compliant or disturbed individuals who do not pose a serious danger to themselves or others.” Indeed, a 2004 study by the Denver Post into the use of Tasers in Colorado found that in one county a third of the 112 people shot with Tasers had been handcuffed at the time. [http://tinyurl.com/279njp] Whatever one thinks about the way police treat suspects today, it is hard to imagine them being able to shoot 37 people with traditional ammunition without generating considerable controversy.

In effect, Tasers enable to the police to lower the violence threshold, which predictably increases the instances in which violence is used. In August 2005, police in Pittsburgh used Tasers (in conjunction with police dogs) to disperse a crowd of anti-recruitment protesters. [http://tinyurl.com/yvy9qh] This led to a review by the City Council on the weapon’s deployment by the police and drew criticism even from people who had previously advocated their use. [http://tinyurl.com/yp7qtt]

There have been calls for extended use of Tasers by both the Police Federation, which represents rank and file police officers [http://tinyurl.com/3877uu] and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). [http://tinyurl.com/2jeoxq] Clearly the government will be bound by other constraints such as cost, but these bodies together with the law and order mob represent a powerful lobby. We can, in short, expect Tasers to become an increasingly common element of the police arsenal, with the inevitable increase in use. Whether that will lead to anybody’s death is difficult to say with certainty, but nobody concerned about the state’s use of violence can ignore the problem. They’re coming. What are we going to do about it?

Here’s the Drew Carey video. It’s on the Dallas police department’s dumb decision to raid a VFW hall that was hosting poker games. This one was one of my suggestions. I think it came out very well.

Somewhere in Alabama, an all-male gang of elite cops from New Jersey spent some down-time from protecting and serving by getting off on sexy drunken displays of power and violence.

HOBOKEN, N.J. — The Hoboken Police Department’s SWAT team has been disbanded, just days after officials learned of racy photos showing the unit’s commander and other officers cavorting with waitresses from a Hooters restaurant in Alabama.

Judging from the selection from the photo slide show, it seems that these photos involve more than just a trip to Hooters, and include some that are more explicit than just racy.

On the same day Hoboken’s new public safety director was sworn in, he gave the city’s police chief orders to disband the SWAT team and to order the lieutenant at the center of the controversy to desk duty.

After seeing the photos of Lt. Angelo Andriani and other members of the Hoboken police SWAT, newly appointed Public Safety Director Bill Bergin said he had to act decisively.

Bergin listed his reasons for disbanding the SWAT team in a phone interview with Newschannel 4’s Pei-Sze Cheng: The brazenness of the whole situation, because everything in the photographs, which I was shocked at, had Hoboken all over it, from the uniforms, to the police car, the bus that was involved.

Bergin ordered the police chief to disband the SWAT team and to have Andriani return from his extended vacation and assign him to desk duty immediately.

The photos were taken last year on a return trip from Louisiana, where the Hoboken officers helped with the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.

They show the waitresses holding shotguns and other weapons belonging to officers under Andriani’s command.

—WNBC (2007-11-16): N.J. SWAT Team Disbanded After Racy Hooters Photos Emerge

Elsewhere in New Jersey, another man in uniform, Anthony Senatore, used his power as a professional narc to extort sexual favors from a woman he’d pressured into becoming a drug informant. Then, after she tried to put a stop to it, he stalked her, forced his way into her house, and raped her. After his victim filed a lawsuit, Senatore was reassigned to a desk job. Although the boss cops and everybody else do concede that Senatore repeatedly exploited his position to coerce sex from the woman, the state A.G. has decided to sweep it under the rug and declined to prosecute on the rape charge. This, apparently, is what passes for having found no wrongdoing on the officer’s part in the eyes of the (male) mayor and the (male) police chief.

JACKSON — The state Attorney General has decided not to prosecute a police detective who is accused, in a civil lawsuit, of raping a drug informant in 2005 and impregnating her with a son who was born eight months later, township officials confirmed Wednesday. Advertisement

The lawsuit filed last year by the informant, identified only as Jane Doe, still is pending in federal court. However, Mayor Mark A. Seda said Wednesday that the attorney general’s decision exonerates Officer Anthony Senatore.

Apparently they found no wrongdoing on the officer’s part, Seda said, adding that Senatore remains on the Jackson force but is no longer a detective.

… According to the lawsuit, Senatore enlisted Jane Doe in April 2005 as a drug informant, in exchange for money and prosecutorial considerations for her children and estranged husband, all of whom have been investigated by the Jackson police.

But soon after Jane Doe became an informant, the detective’s behavior changed, according to the suit.

By means of intimidation, threat, harassment, coercion and/or promises of judicial and prosecutorial consideration for plaintiff and her family, Senatore repeatedly propositioned and solicited plaintiff for sexual relations from late April through July 2005, the suit alleges.

During that time, he had sex with her in her home, in police vehicles and in wooded locations in and around Jackson, according to the suit.

When Jane Doe tried to break off the relationship, Senatore’s deviant, predatory behavior intensified, culminating in a savagely brutal rape in her home on July 25, 2005, according to the suit. As a result of that rape, the plaintiff became pregnant and gave birth to a son March 26, 2006, according to the suit.

The suit accuses the township, the police department and then-Public Safety Director Samuel DiPasquale of permitting and encouraging police officers, including Senatore, to sexually harass and have sex with female informants, female defendants and other women they encountered while on duty.

In case you were curious, this is how seriously the boys in blue take their job of protecting you and me from all the weirdoes and creeps running around out there:

Shortly after the suit was filed, Senatore was removed from the detective bureau and placed on administrative duty where his only responsibilities included paperwork, the mayor said.

… Senatore is now back in circulation as a patrolman, though, because the police department is short staffed, Seda said. He did not know whether the officer will be reinstated to the detective bureau.

But don’t worry. They are seriously concerned about how this predator’s pattern of bullying, sexual harassment, sexual coercion, and rape against a woman substantially under his legally-backed power — which they dignify as a relationship with an informant — will adversely affect their P.R., and maybe a court case. Senatore may be back patrolling the streets, but hey, they might consider adding a couple of clauses to their internal policies.

When an officer’s character is in question, it puts us at risk, Seda said. We didn’t want to give any criminal a loophole to get out of charges.

… With the Attorney General’s investigation complete, the town and the police department are looking into how Senatore was able to take advantage of his job and engage in a relationship with an informant [sic], Seda said.

That’s certainly something we wouldn’t want to see happen again, the mayor said. We’re looking at our policy internally to see what we can do to prevent that.

—Fraidy Reiss, Asbury Park Press (2007-11-08): Detective won’t be prosecuted; Detective won’t be prosecuted

(Stories via Lindsay Beyerstein 2007-11-17 and ACLU Blog 2007-11-17.)