Gangsters in Blue

• Sacramento police collect DNA from middle school students without parental consent.
• More accusations of racial bias at NYPD, this time from black NYPD officers.
• Federal judge throws out jury nullification charges against Julian Heicklen.
• Austin police chief  apologizes, but then criticizes “mob” reaction to one of his officers killing a dog.
• Art Carden on ending the drug war.
• Are We Sliding Toward a Police State?
• St. Louis officials seem pretty determined to make sure their city continues to die.

• Notice that no one felt compelled to shoot the thing.
• Arbitrators found that New York City public school teachers made sexual advances, inappropriate comments to students—keep them on the job, anyway.
• New technology renders regulators obsolete. Naturally, the regulators throw a fit.
• Photo emerges of George Zimmerman’s bloodied head. Also, Zimmerman apparently once canvased his neighborhood demanding that the white son of a local cop who beat a black homeless man be brought to justice. Neither necessarily means he’s innocent. But both are examples of lapses in reporting, nearly all of which seemed have erred in the direction if implicating Zimmerman.
• Government still trying to prohibit cocaine; cocaine prices still dropping.  Meanwhile, government continues to try to make higher ed, health care, home ownership cheaper, and the cost of all three continue to soar. Funny how that works.
• Lawrence O’Donnell: Still a hack.
• U.S. Muslim says the FBI aided in his torture.
• TSA mission creep grows to include sending drug-sniffing dogs into bus stations, “random” searches of bags, backpacks.
• Headline of the day.
• Thank God this monster is off the streets.

Remember the cop who pepper sprayed the students at UC-Davis? He’s still on the job.

Why? Because the job protections negotiated by California’s public service unions—that would be the same unions, negotiating power, and job protections the pepper-sprayed occupiers were championing—have made it nearly impossible to fire public employees.

Once placed on administrative leave, he was subject to an internal affairs investigation. The law requires that its findings alone can bear on personnel actions, never mind all the useful evidence collected by the independent consultants, or the analysis performed by the panel of esteemed statesmen. The internal affairs investigation into Lt. Pike’s actions were conducted by Ed McErlain, a former police officer and “senior investigator for Norman A. Traub Associates, which specializes in employment investigations;” and Deborah Maddux Allison, “a partner with the Van Dermyden Allison Law Corporation, who specializes in employment law and workplace investigations.” They were advised by Charles “Sid” Heal, another retired police officer.

Their method and findings are secret.

The public never gets to read them.

Their report was submitted to something called the Sufficiency Review Board, which is supposed to certify its quality and completeness in another secret process. And the secret internal affairs investigation won’t necessarily lead to anything beyond the report itself . . .

Basically, California law dictates that all UC Davis can say about its most controversial officer is “the employment status of the officer, e.g., current employment status and rank.”

For now, he still works there.

Thanks to the job protections California affords to this class of public employees, the thorough, independent review available to the public and the press has no bearing on the fate of the man who inspired it; whereas whether or not he’ll continue to patrol among the very students he needlessly sprayed is determined by a secretive process wholly lacking in transparency, and accountable only to the administrative apparatus whose very failure helped cause the pepper spraying.

California, like many states, has a “Police Officer Bill of Rights,” a set of rights negotiated by the police union afforded to cops under investigation that goes well above and beyond the rights of regular citizens. In some states, if fellow officers don’t follow strict procedures while investigating another cop, the cop under investigation gets off. If you’re cynical, you might say these “Bills of Rights” are how-to guides for cops who want to help a fellow officer get away with misconduct.

I remember at one point early on in the Occupy protests, one faction of the Occupiers in New York was protesting proposed cuts in police pensions, even as the police union in New York was suing the occupiers. And as cops in other parts of the country were beating them. I guess on some level, an some odd sort of principle at work protesting on behalf of the people who are beating you.

My general take on the Occupy movement is the same view I had last fall. I think they were right in most of their diagnoses. Unfortunately, most of their proposed solutions will only exacerbate the same problems they were protesting. As in this case. Strengthen the bargaining power of public service unions, and it’s just going to get more difficult to fire bad cops. (And teachers. And bureaucrats.)

And it’s already pretty damned difficult.

• My former colleague Katherine Mangu-Ward wins this week’s prize for saddest headline/image combination.
• “Stop resisting.”
• U.S. attorney who went to extraordinary lengths to prosecute pot activist Marc Emery now says the drug should be legalized.
• Headline of the day.
• TSA blog boasts about the agency confiscating a can of soup, then Godwins itself with a 1990s pop culture reference.
• Father lets his kids play in a public park for a couple hours, gets charged with child endangerment.
• What could possibly go wrong?

• The “food desert” myth.
• Public school teacher upset that new “anti-labor” law may prevent her from retiring at the age of 47.
• The return of the debtor’s prison.
• Governments lie.
• Angela Corey’s other case in which she grossly overcharged a defendant—in this case, a 12-year-old.
• Puppycide.
• I tip my hat to you, Venus Green.

Two more. First, from Indiana:

An Elkhart County police officer shot a dog to death early Saturday afternoon. He claims the animal was charging at him, but the owner says that’s not the case.

Police went to the house in the 14000 block of County Road 36 to investigate a minor traffic incident that occurred earlier in the day. But before the officer got to the door, he shot and killed the family pet.

At the quiet country home east of Goshen, you can seldom hear anything but the wind blowing through the trees. But that peace and quiet was shattered by the bullet from the gun of an Elkhart County sheriff’s deputy.

The aftermath was caught on a cellphone video. You can hear a friend of the dog owner asking why the dog was shot and the police officer replying that the dog had attacked him. The officer then asks if he should leave and the homeowner tells him yes.

“It’s a family member and to just see something like that is something you’re just not going to forget,” said the owner of the dog, Josh Bender, “My dog’s name was Charlie. He was a red heeler lab mix dog. He was a pretty cool little guy. He loved to play fetch. He was always playing fetch, always.”

Bender watched as Charlie died from a gunshot. Only minutes earlier he was sitting down to eat lunch when he heard his two dogs barking in his driveway. His wife told him a police officer was pulling up. But before Josh could walk outside, Charlie had been shot.

“I was just getting ready to come out the door and I heard a pop,” Bender said, “I looked out the door and saw my dog flailing around here with blood everywhere and a police officer standing there with a look on his face like ‘what did I do?’”

And from Austin, Texas:

The fatal shooting of a pet dog by an Austin Police Department officer over the weekend is sparking outrage near and far.

As of Monday evening, close to 22,000 people had hit the “Like” button on a Facebook page called “Justice for Cisco,” the name of  Austinite Michael Paxton’s dog, which was killed by an officer.

On Saturday afternoon, a passerby called 911 around 4:30 to report a domestic disturbance.

What the responding officer, APD Officer Thomas Griffin, didn’t know when he arrived minutes later is that the 911 caller mistakenly gave the wrong address.

Upon arrival, the first person Officer Griffin encountered was Michael Paxton and his blue heeler, named Cisco.

Austin police confirmed Monday that Officer Griffin got out of his patrol car with his weapon drawn.

In audio captured on Officer Griffin’s dashboard camera, you can hear the officer give Paxton commands to put his hands up and to control his dog. Austin police removed a few seconds of the tape where Griffin fatally shoots the dog.

“Why didn’t you get your dog when I told you to get your dog?” questioned Officer Griffin.

I didn’t know! You just came around the corner and told me to put my hands up. What am I supposed to do?” replied Paxton.

For Bogota, New York New Jersey Officer Regina Tasca, it was trying to prevent other officers from beating the hell out of an emotionally disturbed man. Tasca hasn’t been fired yet. Her fate now rests in the hands of judge.

In Bogota, officers control whether or not their dashboard camera rolls. Fortunately, when Officer Tasca responded to a call in April 2011, she clicked her unit “on.” The black-and-white tape captures it all–a mother, Tara, screaming for police to stop punching her son on their front lawn. She had called to have her emotionally disturbed son Kyle taken to the hospital. Bogota police responded while waiting for the ambulance. Tasca was the sole officer on the road that day, so she called for back-up according to protocol. Ridgefield Park police then sent two officers. Tasca had just completed her state-mandated training for working with emotionally disturbed citizens.

Tasca described what we see on the videotape: “The Ridgefield Park officer automatically charges and takes him down to the ground. I was quite shocked. As he’s doing that, another Ridgefield Park officer flies to the scene in his car, jumps out and starts punching him in the head.”

On the tape you can hear Tara, the mother, and Kyle, her son, screaming, “Why are you punching him?” and “Stop punching me!”

Kyle, by the way, was never charged with a crime. Tasca got involved, and was eventually able to pry Kyle’s attackers off of him. And that was her undoing.

Tasca’s voice began to waiver as she recounted the meeting with her superior officer:

“The next thing I know he asks me to turn over my weapon and be sent for a fitness for duty exam,” she said.

Bogota PD, after hearing Tasca’s story, believes she is psychologically incompetent to be a police officer, and she is being sent for testing. The Ridgefield Park Police officers seen tackling and punching an emotionally disturbed man waiting for an ambulance are never questioned. never interviewed by an Internal Affairs Investigator, and are still working the streets today.

Bogota Police chose to suspend Tasca, an 11-year veteran with numerous commendations. There are photographs from the hospital documenting the bruises on the 22-year-old’s head, back, arms and wrists.

Tasca says the real reason she’s being called out on these charges is she crossed the “blue line” by refusing to support another officer even when he used excessive force.

This is the third story I can recall in the last year or so in which a police officer who crossed the blue line was sent off for a psychological evaluation. It isn’t just that cops don’t rat out other cops, it’s that those who do obviously have psychological problems. It’s a chilling thought. It also sends a pretty clear message to other well-meaning cops. Cross the blue line, and you may not only lose your job, we’ll also publicly question your sanity.

• Union-negotiated arbitrator says Montgomery County, Maryland police officers who commit felonies should still be allowed to get disability once they get out of prison.
• No hugging.
• Frontline will air another special about forensics tonight. From what I understand, Hayne and West will make an appearance.
• Man claims a stroke turned him gay.
• Things Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings learned from his trip to Antarctica. If you’re on Twitter, Jennings’ feed is great. The guy has a wicked sense of humor.
• An oral history of outlaw country.
• Police handcuff  a six-year-old Georgia girl for “throwing a tantrum” during her kindergarten class.

A reporter records an Albuquerque cop allegedly beating a club patron in the club parking lot. The cop arrests the reporter and confiscates the tape.

A judge later throws out the charges against the reporter.

But what about the tape? Turns out the cop neglected to tag it into evidence, then took it home for a private viewing. Somehow, miraculously, when the cop returned the tape, the video of her beating the club patron had been deleted. She has no idea how this happened.

This all comes by way of a civil suit filed by the reporter. The officer was never charged with a crime, and still works for the Albuquerque Police Department.

It’s really quite amazing how often these odd electronic glitches accidentally destroy videos that depict alleged police misconduct.

I lost count about halfway through.

A Montgomery County sheriff’s deputy is accused of using his badge and gun to force a repo man to give him his wife’s truck back.

“I’m trying to make an honest living,” repo man Brenton Huff told KPRC Local 2 investigator Amy Davis. “I shouldn’t have to worry about being shot, especially by police.”

Huff was hired to repossess a 2007 Chevrolet Silverado from Tammy Berkley. The lender told him she was four months behind on her payments. Huff said he spotted the truck in Conroe on March 15. He followed it, ironically, to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department Auto Theft Task Force office. When the driver went in, Huff went to work.

“I just backed up to it, hooked up and pulled it down the street,” Huff explained.

The wrecker driver says he pulled into a parking lot at the jail to call the sheriff’s office and report the repossession, a routine procedure. Seconds after he drove away, Huff said three cars pulled up alongside him, boxing in his wrecker. The cars were unmarked, the men in civilian clothes, but Huff says they all had guns pointing right at him.

“I really thought I was gonna get shot right then,” Huff told Davis. “I had my hands up here on the window so they could see them. The officer was yelling at me. He said, ‘That’s my wife’s truck.’”

That officer was Keith Winford, a Montgomery County Sheriff’s detective, who Local 2 confirmed, is married to Tammy Berkley. Winford was accompanied by three to four other deputies.

“He just grabbed me out, slammed me up against the truck right here,” said Huff.

The deputies put Huff in handcuffs. He says Winford drove his tow truck back to the sheriff’s office. After holding him for about 15 minutes, he demanded the repo man release his wife’s truck.

“Once I unhooked it, he told me ‘Get out of here.’ And then he told me if he catches me in his driveway, he’s gonna shoot me,” Huff recounted.

Certainly the DA is on the case, right?

When we called the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, first Assistant District Attorney Phil Grant told Local 2 the Texas Rangers are investigating the incident . . .

Grant said it’s possible the detectives thought Huff was stealing the truck.

Riiiiiight. Because because if you’re a car thief, you naturally use a big honking conspicuous tow truck. And you target the cars parked in the lot next to the Sheriff’s Department Auto Theft Task Force.

It gets better.

A week after the interview with Grant, he said Winford and the other deputies are claiming that Huff put an illegal tracking device on the truck. Huff denies that allegation. The detectives say they gave it back to Huff, so they have no proof of the tracking device.

Awfully nice of them, wasn’t it? The guy puts an illegal tracking device on the truck that belongs to a cop’s wife, and when they find it, they just give it back to him. No arrest, no charges. I mean, the alternative is that they’re lying through their teeth to cover up for the fact that they acted like a bunch of thugs, broke about a dozen laws, and pointed their guns at a guy who just doing his job.