Gangsters in Blue

Seems that the city of St. Louis, like many cities, allows the police to confiscate the cars of people suspected (but not necessarily convicted) of certain crimes. They have a contract with a city towing firm, and said firm was allowing police officers and their families to "rent" confiscated cars free of charge, sometimes for months on end. Officers and their families could also sometimes purchase the confiscated cars at a fraction of the cars’ value.

All of that is pretty outrageous. But it gets better.  The St. Louis Post-Dispatch stumbled onto the story after investigating the daughter of the city’s police chief. She had been involved in a number of accidents with different cars. On several occasions she had wrecked a car, then simply gone down to the towing service to get a 60-80 percent discount on a new one. After one accident, her blood-alcohol concentration tested at .17. She wasn’t arrested or charged. The department says it has "no idea" why she was let go.

The police department hired a law firm, which concluded that the towing arrangement broke no rules or laws. The chief improbably claims he was oblivious to the deals his daughter was getting (her relationship with the towing service apparently goes back to 2002). The Post-Dispatch reports that the chief’s last public statement on the matter was that, "the absolute necessity in maintaining transparency in the eyes of the public."

He has since declined to comment.

(Via TheNewspaper.com)

As it turns out, they were just plain ol’ chocolate chip cookies.

The initial story about the guy’s arrest was circulated all over the world.

Police officers in Blue Mound didn’t think much of the cookies dropped off at their station Monday night – until they got a whiff of them.

Overpowering the chocolate chips was the pungent smell of marijuana.

“It reeked of it,” said Lt. Thomas Cain, a Blue Mound police spokesman. “It wasn’t hard to tell. Anyone that’s been around marijuana before would have known.”

Makes you wonder what to think the next time this guy writes in a police report that his probable cause to conduct a search was the scent of marijuana coming from a car or apartment, doesn’t it?

Also, why is it that these field tests police use turn up so many false positives? If you’ll remember back a bit, Dallas police had similar problems when the informant they were using was planting ground up pool chalk on targets. Cops doing field tests in those cases claim the tests showed the chalk (also known as sheet rock) to be cocaine. Several times.

Last year in California, a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap came back positive for GHB.

Not the Gambinos. NYPD. 

Last year, New York police officers were seen dancing in the streets just before arresting four men in a city nightclub on charges of selling $100 worth of cocaine.  It took six months and the men’s life savings, but their names were finally cleared when prosecutors took the unusual step of announcing in court that the men had committed no crime.

That’s because club surveillance video shows that the undercover cops had no contact with the accused men in the two hours they were in the club.

Now, club owner Eduardo Espinoza says the police are retaliating against him.

Espinoza said he thinks police are retaliating against him because of a strange phone call he received shortly before the harassment began.

A man who identified himself as the officer who made the drug arrest in his club demanded to know if Espinoza had taped the events of that night.

"I said I already gave it to the defendants," Espinoza said, "He said, ‘Oh s–t.’ He hung up."

Espinoza had received just two summonses in the two-and-a-half years he owned the club prior to turning over the videotapes.  He has received more than a dozen since.

"I been harassed so much, I’m selling my business," said Espinoza, owner of Delicias de Mi Tierra on 91st Place in Elmhurst.

"Every two to three weeks, there’s cops in here, searching the bar. If there’s no violation, they’ll make it up. I lost all my clients - everybody’s scared to come in my place right now."

The officers implicated by the surveillance tapes are being investigated, but still on duty.