PoliceMisconduct.net

You Said That On The Radio?!?

January 25, 2010 @ 8:43 AM by David Packman

So I woke up this morning to see that the news segment on WFAE in Charlotte North Carolina ran where I was interviewed and asked about what Charlotte Police Department’s record means in terms of the number of police officers that have been brought up on criminal charges within the last year.

…and after listening to it I can imagine that some people might get the wrong idea about what I’m saying. Of course, this is understandable as news radio clips tend to be short and, so, a lot of pertinent details get lost in the translation between the 20 seconds worth of clip that was distilled from about an hour’s worth of my talking with the reporter.

Not that it’s a bad report, not at all, I’m really glad that the reporter was doing research into the issue to find the truth. But police misconduct is a complex matter that, well, is difficult to distill into a short sound byte… so here’s some explanation.

What is Average?

One of the first things to address right off the bat is what I mean when I say Charlotte’s police department is about average by way of our statistical reports.

First of all, the biggest problem we’re trying to deal with as far as this project goes is that there really is no baseline for determining whether “being average” is a good thing or a bad thing. This is why I started this project, to come up with a ruler by which we can take these measurements to see where problems were and how to deal with them. Without that ruler, we’re sort of guessing and while the government gives us rulers to measure crime rates, it doesn’t do the same for police misconduct.

What do I mean? Well, what I mean is that we currently don’t have a definitive way to tell if the national average we’re seeing is normal, higher than normal, or lower than normal because there’s never been a concerted effort to actually measure the amount of police misconduct that goes on in the US and trend that data over time.

So, there’s no way to tell if the national average we report is higher than what it usually is or lower… because there is no other year’s worth of stats to compare it to.

So, when I say Charlotte is average and that it doesn’t make our top 25 worst list for departments over 1,000 sworn officers, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good thing for Charlotte because, while average, it may still be more misconduct than you should see normally. We just don’t have a way to tell if this is the case or not yet.

Police being arrested is a good thing?!?

I’d imagine that this one raised some eyebrows, and I can certainly understand why. But I want people to think about this carefully.

First, police misconduct will always happen. Police are human and they have the same temptations everyone else does. So, invariably, a certain percentage will commit crimes each year.

Second, if we accept that a percentage of cops will commit crimes each year, then it should be considered a deviation from the norm when a police department reports a number of police arrested that is significantly below that average. Especially if a large department reports 0 officers arrested.

Third, which do you think is more likely when a large department reports 0 officers arrested? That the department is staffed with super-human police officers devoid of the temptations normal humans have, or that there is a high potential that the department is shielding it’s officers from accountability and transparency, thus encouraging them to misbehave more.

So, when I say that sometimes it may be a good thing to see that a fair portion of officers are being disciplined or criminally charged it’s an acceptance of the fact that officers sometimes do bad things and that it’s better that those facts are out in the open and the officer held accountable for it than if it’s all kept secret.

I’m definitely not saying it’s a good thing that officers act in ways that get them arrested. I’m just saying it’s a good thing when they are arrested for acting in ways that would get a normal person arrested since it can be a sign of accountability and transparency. Als0 that, right now, it’s hard to tell if any given number of arrests made in a particular department is abnormally high or low yet because, as I said, we don’t have a ruler yet.

Hopefully, if anyone else has some questions about that report, please feel free to leave a comment or write an email. Also, I wrote a follow up article about the nature of how police are treated in the criminal justice system a few days ago as well.

Thanks.

Police Misconduct NewsWatch – The Higher Standard Quiz Edition

January 24, 2010 @ 2:18 AM by David Packman

Statue Something a little different for our weekly police misconduct news wrap-up where we take the stories collected by our National Police Misconduct News Feed for the week and take a look at a few in a bit more detail. This time, I thought maybe it was time for a little quiz.

So sharpen your pencils and see if you’re held to the same higher standard that police officers are held to and maybe you can with the trophy in our first ever Police Misconduct NewsWatch Quiz.

Question 1: Would you be fired if you were caught lying to your boss and, if so, could you appeal and get your job back with back pay and benefits?

A new-ish policy instituted by the Boston Massachusetts police department made a lot of headlines this week. The so-called “bright-line” policy that makes dishonesty in testimony or during an internal investigation an automatic firing is said to be a first… though, way back in September, when they were first talking about this policy in Boston, I wrote about that policy and how a similar policy in Seattle Washington didn’t turn out so well.

Interestingly enough, the same week Boston made their policy official, the 4th Seattle Police officer in a row overturned his dismissal from the police department for dishonesty through an appeal to the city’s police board. So far, Seattle is batting 0/4 in enforcing it’s policy on dishonesty, so we’ll have to see if Boston’s police union is as effective as Seattle’s in protecting police officers with “faulty memory problems”.

Question 2: If your boss found out you were arrested for pulling a gun on someone would you still have a job, even if you were convicted?

A Canton Mississippi police officer was charged with misdemeanor threatening behavior this week for pulling his gun on a man outside a restaurant during an argument. While definitely not the most egregious police misconduct story this week, the chief’s response was what I found interesting. The paper covering the case quotes the Canton police chief as saying

“It’s always disappointing anytime any of our officers is focused on in a negative manner. That’s hurtful to the department…”

So, it’s not upsetting to the police chief that the officer may have done something wrong, it’s only upsetting because it’s public knowledge. The chief also says that it’s doubtful that the officer will be fired, especially since the charge is only a misdemeanor.

Question 3: Do you think a judge would agree if you argued that losing your job was punishment enough if you were convicted on drug and theft charges?

In Lyndhurst Ohio, now-former police officer Robert Colombo has been sentenced to probation for stealing heroin from evidence to support his own drug habit, and then overdosing on it. As I wrote on Friday, our statistics show a vast disparity between how police are treated in the justice system and how the rest of us are treated.

Columbo’s attorney in this case appears to think the reason for this is because being fired is punishment enough when he suggested to the judge; “He’ll never work in law enforcement again. He’s suffered, He’s been punished.” Perhaps that’s why police officer’s get sentenced to prison less often and spend less time in prison when sentenced than the rest of us… well, at least this judge appeared to think so too.

Question 4: If you threatened a cab driver with a gun to get a free cab ride do you think the police would wait 9 months to arrest you?

A Chicago Illinois police officer is just now facing charges for robbing a cab driver while drunk. Of course, we first reported about this story in May of last year about a drunk Chicago police officer who refused to pay his fare and, when confronted by the cabbie, pointed his gun at him and reportedly said;

“you choose. Either I don’t owe you shit or you get out of the car and see what’s gonna happen…”

Things didn’t get better for the cabbie When police arrived and figured out the robbery suspect was a fellow cop. Instead of immediately arresting their coworker they instead offered to have the drunk officer pay the cab driver his fare and tried to talk him out of filing a complaint.

Question 5: Do you get 10.5 weeks of vacation at time-and-a-half pay that carries over each year?

A recent investigative report describing how some officers in Cincinnati Ohio have $100,000 – $200,000 in comp time (one stored up a whopping $400k) stored up for retirement reveals that, if the police department there was a business, they’d never survive. Thanks to Ohio state law that forces cities to allow unions to use arbitration to settle contract negotiations and the tendency of arbitrators to side with unions on most disputes, that union forced the city to accept “compromises” in the contracts.

Some of those compromises? Officers get 120 hours of time-and-a-half comp time each year just in case they have to work holidays. If they work holidays they get that pay plus regular pay, if they don’t that comp time carries over each year, which have allowed some officers to store up thousands of hours. Also, because of this, officers with over 19 years of service get 10.5 weeks of vacation time each year, at time and a half.

The report estimates that these policies cost the city $23.6 million in extra pay alone.

Question 6: If a police officer caught you for drunk driving, would the officer let you go just because of your job?

Finally, this story probably made the biggest splash in the blogosphere but didn’t make many headlines. Four DUI accidents involving police officers prompted a local paper in New York state to ask 10 officers, under protection of anonymity, if they protect each other when they get stopped on suspicion of driving while drunk.

The answer was yes, that they rarely charge off-duty cops with DUIs and that, unless it’s a situation they cannot hide, like an accident, they would find some way to let them off. The report goes on to also suggest what our numbers on police arrests concluded, that even when charged with DUI, officers know how to game the system to make it difficult to get a conviction.

Quiz Results

So, how did you do on this quiz?

Give yourself 1 point for every question you answered with a YES and find the results below:

0 Points – Congratulations, you’re held to the same high standards as a police officer.

1-2 Points – Not bad, you might be a police officer, or a politician.

Anything over 3 points – Sorry, apparently, you’re held to a higher standard than police officers.

[poll id="15"]

Now, sure, the test was a gimmick, but the stories are real and, believe it or not, they are just a few of the stories from just this last week alone. It’s something worth thinking about the next time a police department spokesman or leader suggests that their officers are held to a higher standard because maybe the question we should really ask is, “a higher standard compared to what?”

Because, frankly, when I ask myself the questions I listed above, I couldn’t honestly answer yes to a single one of them.

Could you?

Should they?

Paul Schene Trial Ends In Hung Jury, Surprised?

January 22, 2010 @ 3:46 PM by David Packman

Video from a SeaTac holding cell that led to charges being filed against King County Deputy Paul Schene of misdemeanor fourth degree assault on 15-year-old Malika Calhoun.

King County Washington deputy Paul Schene’s trial on misdemeanor assault charges for the videotaped beating of 15-year-old Malika Calhoun has resulted in a hung jury today and the judge has called a mistrial.

Surprised?

I wasn’t, I’m sorry to say… and you wouldn’t be either if you were a long-time reader. I remarked on my worries about this case, and any other case against police officers, from the start based on similar recent trials where, despite compelling testimony and evidence, King County juries refused to convict police officers accused of excessive force.

Of course, you don’t have to look much further than the article I put up earlier today showing how difficult it is to prosecute and convict a police officer for criminal excessive force in general. On-duty assault cases tend to be the most difficult to bring against law enforcement officers because they are so easy to defend by suggesting that, no matter how bad the beating is, it was all a matter of training and was justified by the smallest flinch or perceived threat… including a soft-soled tennis shoe flung off the foot of a petulant child.

While prosecutors say they are asking for a retrial, and some may be encouraged that 11 of the 12 jurors voted to convict Schene. I’m still not very confident that the results will be any better next time, again based on the history of trials against police officers here in Seattle Washington, where there’s now one more case to add to that chain of accountability failures.

The trial date for a retrial has been tentatively set for June 1, 2010.

-Edited 01/22/10 for brevity

What Can We Learn From Criminal Complaints Against Cops?

January 22, 2010 @ 2:13 PM by David Packman

I recently had a call from a reporter, Lisa Miller from NPR affiliate 90.7 WFAE in Charlotte North Carolina, who was interested in finding out how many police officers were charged with a criminal offense in 2009. This question was prompted by a recent case involving an officer now facing numerous charges for allegedly sexually assaulting at least 6 women while on-duty.

Of course, as I constantly mention as my reason for starting this project, she had difficulty finding any data because, well, there isn’t anyone tracking it… well, aside from us. But, in the process of looking for it, she came across our site and I, of course, was happy to give her our statistics in that regard. Though, of course, with the usual disclaimer that those numbers are only for the months of April – December of 2009 since the NPMSRP didn’t start until April 2009 and, beyond that, are likely a low-ball estimate of what actually occurs.

Whether or not what she was researching actually makes it into her report, I thought it might be worthwhile to delve into those numbers a bit deeper in case anyone else was interested in the separation between criminal activity by police and police misconduct in general.

As readers of our 2009 Preliminary Police Misconduct Statistical Report already know, in our 2009 reporting period we determined that 4,012 law enforcement officers were involved in reported instances of police misconduct. Of those, 1,363 were criminally charged and of those, 92 were people in law enforcement leadership roles (i.e. sheriffs and police chiefs).

Now, when breaking down the difference between charges vs reports in our reporting period for 2009 we see the following:
Chrg V Rep We see that financial crimes (fraud, theft, extortion, embezzlement, etc) are prosecuted most often at 69.4% of reports while, interestingly, violent crimes tend to be the least often prosecuted at 24.1% despite being the most often reported type of misconduct.

I believe this is most likely because allegations of excessive force are exceptionally difficult to prosecute as they are often argued as justified within policy and that argument is difficult to beat without actual video evidence, and even then is still difficult to win. So prosecutors tend to go after those case less often.

This is, at least, what the data appears to suggest when we delve deeper and segment on-duty and off-duty violent crimes:
OnV V OffV As you can see, on-duty violence is only prosecuted 9.6% of the time while off-duty violence is prosecuted 66.7% of the time. Again, indicative of the reluctance of prosecutors to persue allegations of on-duty related use of force incidents.

When we look at the results of criminal justice actions taken against law enforcement we see that financial crimes tend to result in the highest conviction rate while, surprisingly, drug and alcohol related charges tend to have the lowest rate of success.
Chrg V Con The reason for difficulties in the drugs/alcohol category appears to be with DUI type cases as police officers tend to be very proficient on how best to defend against that type of case. Law enforcement officers tend to refuse to take BAC tests and, as in the news recently, officers tend to be unwilling to charge fellow officers in traffic stop situations due to the stigmas attached to “ratting out” fellow offices.

Finally, when we do a comparison between how law enforcement officers are treated when they are on the other side of the law and how the general public is treated we see quite a few discrepancies that appear to indicate a real bias in favor of law enforcement officers in the criminal justice system.
GenPop V LEOPop As a note for this graph, Conviction Rates and Incarceration Rates are percentages while Average Sentence length is the number of months a person is sentenced to when convicted. Also, the Incarceration Rate is the percentage of time a conviction results in incarceration compared to probation or alternative sentences.

With all this said, though, it’s important to understand that when we do make a distinction between police misconduct and police criminality that there sometimes isn’t a very distinct line between behaviors that distinguish one from the other.

For example, a police officer found to have used excessive force on a detainee may face internal disciplinary action but may not face criminal charges while a police officer in a different agency might. It’s usually at the discretion of a prosecutor or even the police department itself whether to remand a case for criminal charges or not.

So, realistically, we shouldn’t use whether or not a police officer was charged with a crime to make any definitive judgments on criminal behavior by law enforcement because that’s not all that the numbers tell us. Although, it can tell us about the biases built into our justice system as the ratio between charged and non-charged misconduct might tell us how often laws are actually enforced against law enforcement officers themselves and how transparent that process is in comparison to how the criminal justice system applies to regular citizens.

Ultimately, though, what charging data shows us is a rather complex picture. For example, is a high number of police officers charged with crimes from one department indicative of corruption? Not necessarily. After all, police misconduct will always happen, there’s no avoiding it so long as human beings are police officers. So a high number of criminal cases by itself may be a sign of good accountability, or a potential problem.

The type of data that we do need to look at, though, is how an agency’s prosecution rate, disciplinary rate, allegation rate, and conviction rates stack up together versus a national normative average. This kind of complex comparison will give us more information about what the numbers might mean and more insight into how effective our nation is at holding police accountable when they end up on the other side of the law…

Unfortunately, we don’t have all that data yet, but it’s something that we are still working on. Given time, we may be able to have a clearer picture not only of the average reporting and criminal charge data for law enforcement, but put more meaning behind those numbers to determine if a given agency has a problem.

This is one reason we hope to continue on with this project, to get a more realistic and useful measure of police misconduct in the US so that we can use that as a baseline with which to compare different agencies and identify underlying problems.

Without that information… we’re just left to guess at it in the dark, just like Lisa was.

Still Fighting To Rebuild After Winning A Dismissal

January 18, 2010 @ 3:18 AM by David Packman

James Simmons

James Simmons won a hard-fought battle last week when King County prosecutors filed to dismiss his wrongful 2007 conviction on drug charges, but his fight still isn’t close to being over despite that dismissal of his conviction becoming official shortly after filed.

Still living from shelter to shelter while now in his 50′s it seems like his entire life has been stolen from him by little more than the word of a transit cop who was already under investigation when James was facing trial in 2007.

Sure, James has had his conviction overturned, which makes him innocent in the eyes of the law… but he is still on the streets without a penny to his name, still has little chance at finding work in a field that used to call him for work instead of the other way around, and still faces more battles ahead before he can completely clear his name and record and improve his chances at rebuilding his life.

Worst of all, even if he does all that, he’ll have to live with the years of suffering he’s endured and will never get back his security clearance that made him such a highly-valued commodity in the information technology field before his wrongful arrest and conviction.

But, despite all this, James still fights to clear his name and rebuild what he can. Even this week he’s looking forward to an interview for a contract and, at least this time, he’s hopeful that having a court document in his hand that proves that he’s an innocent man will be enough to convince someone to hire him for work that used to go begging for his help.

Unfortunately, most people think that, after you’re exonerated, that the battle is over and that, magically, all that harm done just disappears. But it doesn’t and, as a cautionary tale, it’s important to understand just how unthinkable it was for James to be a victim of such a travesty of justice… and that, because of this, it shows just how easily his story could be anyone’s.

His background included several years of working at NASA and after he left there he traveled the world. Even when talking to him in person after all that has happened to him it seems incomprehensible that someone would accuse him of dealing crack on a street corner. The picture of James as a confident man with a clean record and strong career just before his fateful trip to Seattle to do a contract job for Boeing truly makes what happened to him so likely to happen to anyone at all.

Yes, what happened to James was born of police misconduct, but there was more to it than that. One wrong was built on top of another and many more mistakes were made in the system that allowed that misconduct to blossom into a wrongful conviction that took everything away from an innocent man and now it won’t give anything back for making that mistake.

During his trial in 2007 nobody was told that the officer who’s sole testimony put James away was under investigation at that same time on allegations of dishonesty in another drug case that caused the King County Sheriff’s Office to fire him just a few months after James was convicted and forced the prosecutors to drop even another similar case.

Nor did it matter at the time that the place the officer claimed to arrest James didn’t even exist and that testimony from other officers who arrived at the scene as backup contradicted with the arresting officer’s.

All that didn’t matter to the court that convicted him, nor has it mattered to anyone else for quite some time… employers, while sometimes going so far as to putting him to work for a day or two, quickly close their ears to his explanations when they would get the results of his background check back and summarily fire him.

Nobody, not employers, lawyers, or reporters would even listen to his story until we heard it and published it in April/May of 2009, a bout a two years after he was released from prison after his wrongful conviction, three years after his brutal wrongful arrest.

But, he tries not to dwell on that now, he was just thankful that someone finally listened and at least put his story out there for people to see. And, now he’s thankful that there was a lawyer out there who read that story,took up his case, and finally filed to vacate his conviction… and that now, with that momentum he’s hoping someone out there will let him work again and rebuild.

Honestly, to see James have hope again and the desire to keep fighting seems like another battle won in it’s own right. And it even seems fitting that it’s so close to the day we celebrate one man’s dream that James finally saw a glimmer daylight at the end of a long nightmare.

Yet it’s still hard not not linger on the fact that James is not the only victim out there… and that more are made each day than even our project can count. And that many of them won’t even get the chance to fight the long fight that James is now facing.

After all, consider that James’s story was never in the news… and still isn’t. And the thought that so many victims suffer in silence like James did, and still does, should be a nightmare for us all.

Police Misconduct NewsWatch for 01-16-10

January 16, 2010 @ 10:11 AM by David Packman

It’s time once again for our weekly Police Misconduct NewsWatch where we select a few of the stories we tracked since last week, about 75 of them this week, and write a bit more about them than we can on the National Police Misconduct News Feed where we track all these reports.

However, I always find it interesting to see what stories people latch onto since, sometimes, the stories I think are bad don’t get a reaction while others do… So, this week I’m mixing it up a bit and letting the people who follow our news feed on Twitter pick the stories highlighted this week by reviewing some of the reports that readers re-tweeted.

So, here’s the weekly Police Misconduct NewsWatch, Re-Tweet Edition:

What’s a Cop Gotta Do To Get Fired Around Here?

Re-Tweeted by waitXandXbleed and Dizzlski

In Minnetonka Minnesota it appears as though the bar for getting fired from being a cop is set pretty high, but that doesn’t appear to have stopped one officer from trying his darnedest to pole-vault up to it with one felony conviction and another felony arrest after that.

Minnetonka Police officer Daniel Saba, who is still on leave after having already plead guilty to breaking into homes to feed his drug habit in May was busted yet again in December for doing the exact same thing while doing his on-the-side snow removal job.

A judge has amended Saba’s release conditions while he awaits sentencing for his first conviction to prohibit him for doing snow removal and now faces another hearing over the latest charges in February… yet, don’t ask me why, he’s still a cop, albeit a cop on leave.

Man Wins Contempt of Cop Brutality Lawsuit

Re-Tweeted by solidadrocks

The town of Elon North Carolina settled a lawsuit for $50k filed by the ACLU-NCLF on behalf of a man who alleges that he was tasered and arrested in revenge for disrespecting a cop.

Apparently, according to John Wayn Paylor, the man went through an accident scene roadblock on his road and yelled at a cop for not letting him through and, a day later, four officers (including the one he disrespected) came to his home, tasered him twice, and arrested him on a warrant filled out by the alleged butt-hurt cop.

…oh, the nature of the warrant that allowed this? Reckless driving. The questionable tasering and arrest was caught on tape for posterity.

Huff The Magic Dragon

Re-Tweeted by standby90 and blanksslate

In Austin Texas a police officer who was on desk duty after being arrested when someone reportedly witnessed him huffing in a Lowes parking lot was arrested yet again for abusing inhalants at an apartment complex when citizens alerted police there as well.

When police arrived they discovered their fellow officer sitting blissfully amongst 36 cans of abused aerosol computer spay cleaner… While the officer is still on desk duty after his second arrest, reader @blanksslate can’t help but remind everyone that, despite what McCroskey from Airplane! says, it’s never the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

Jeepers Creepers, Where’d You Get Those Peepers?

Re-tweeted by butterflypa and drunkenatheist

Natrona County Wyoming Reserve Deputy Alan Brooks was arrested on seven felony counts over his activity as a local landlord. Apparently the long-time deputy wired a rental property he owned with several hidden cameras that he would use to record a couple who rented from him when they were engaged in sexual activity.

This videotaping apparently lasted for four years until the couple discovered the small holes in the ceilings which led them to a boarded-up shed. When they tried to get in they were confronted by the landlord.

But, when police were called a warrant was requested and a subsequent search of the home and shed discovered an elaborate hidden camera system as well as hundreds of VHS tapes of the couple engaged in sex.

…and yes, if you’re asking, reserve deputies are classified as sworn officers for tracking purposes, and he was fired shortly after being arrested.

Peeing Is Against The Law ‘Round These Parts

Re-Tweeted by IndependentInst and ConspiracyF

Apparently Milwaukee County Wisconsin Deputy Sergeant Scott Krause was wrong when he felt that asking to use the restroom was a crime worthy of a beatdown now that he’s been convicted on charges of misdemeanor battery and feloneous misconduct in public office for pummelling a handcuffed DUI suspect in the back of his cruiser for asking to use the bathroom.

According to the court documents, Krause had taken his suspect to the jail and, while sitting in the back of the cruiser, Ray Calderon had a strong urge to pee and notified the deputy as to that need. Krause told Calderon to shut up but that wasn’t a sufficient answer for his bladder and Calderon tapped on the window to ask again. At this point, Kraus began attacking the cuffed Calderon and “struck him several times in the face with a closed fist”.

Apparently, it was all caught on tape and Krause was arrested shortly after the complaint of excessive force was made… though both police and the DA are refusing media requests for a copy of that video.

If That’s Disorderly Conduct, I’d Hate To See Assault

Re-tweeted by standby90 and overanalyzeit

Fairlawn New Jersey police officer Stephen Wassel recently plead guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct charges and was ordered to pay a $750 fine in a plea deal that dropped assault charges against him for using excessive force on a 12 year old boy he arrested.

Apparently, the boy was riding bikes with two friends when one of the friends stole a bike. The three were then stopped by police and the boy ran. At this point, according to court documents, Wassel cuffed the pre-teen, grabbed him by the back of the head, then pounded his face into the pavement several times. Then he stepped on his head and smooshed his face into the pavement again.

In any case, Wassel retired so he can get a pension and, now that the charge was reduced to only a misdemeanor, it’s assumed he can go on to be a cop elsewhere to man-up and administer street justice against other pre-teens again, if he so desires. The boy was not charged, by the way.

Just Assisting A Fellow Officer, Ma’am!

Re-tweeted by JosephSavitz, CathyScott, IndependentInst, Sugarluver8 and GrimTweets

Finally, New Orleans Louisiana police officer Thomas Clark was indicted on allegations of 2nd degree kidnapping in his alleged role in the rape of a shackled woman by his partner, officer Henry L Hollins, who was indicted for allegedly raping a woman at gunpoint in June of last year.

The New Orleans Police Chief is apparently blaming a “shadow government” for all the bad press lately and for a poll suggesting that only 33% of New Orleans residents are happy with their police force. Maybe that explains why these two cops were prosecuted by Orleans Parish DA instead of the NOPD Public “Integrity” Bureau, who apparently didn’t see a problem here.

But, I guess that’s because only a sinister shadowy cabal would consider cops kidnapping and raping citizens a bad thing.

Some Justice for James

January 14, 2010 @ 11:21 PM by David Packman

Header3

Updated 01/18/2010

In 2005, information technology consultant James E Simmons III came to Seattle to perform contract work for a large local company using his experience with IT security compliance that, at the time, was a highly prized skill set that kept him busy with contract engagements all over the US.

All that changed in November of 2006 when Simmons was violently arrested and injured by now-former King County Deputy James Schrimpsher on allegations that Simmons was seen selling crack at two different bus stops, including one bus stop that apparently doesn’t even exist.

Even though the suggestion that a highly-paid professional with everything to lose would be selling crack at bus stops would seem suspect on the face of it, Simmons was still convicted in 2007 of possession with intent to distribute despite a lack of any evidence.

Indeed, that conviction appeared to have solely depended on the word of deputy Schrimpsher himself who, unknown to all involved in the case at the time, was under investigation during the trial for another questionable drug arrest he made just one month after he arrested Simmons… an arrest that would ultimately cost him his job in December of 2007 after a year-long investigation that eventually found that he had lied about the arrest.

Despite the fact that the findings of dishonesty against Schrimpsher forced King County prosecutors to dismiss similar charges against another person Schrimpsher had arrested, they never reviewed the highly questionable arrest of James Simmons and, by the time we originally wrote about the story in April of 2009, James had already served one year in prison and was left homeless and destitute after his long legal battles and appeals… and the conviction on his record was holding him back from finding employment and rebuilding his life again.

Schrimpsher, however, had no problems moving on to yet another job as a cop with the Algona Washington Police Department where he was hired despite being fired for dishonesty in King County and for having a questionable history in Phelps County Missouri before that, where he was the subject of at least two excessive force lawsuits and had been in trouble for mishandling evidence prior to signing on in King County Washington.

Hopefully, though, at least some of that story may be changing soon.

A few months after we first published the story of James’ arrest we were contacted by Gary Preble with Preble Law in Olympia Washington who was interested in finding out more about the Simmons case. Luckily, despite difficulty getting a hold of James because of his homelessness, we were able to get James in touch with the attorneys and, in December of 2009, Gary Preble, with assistance from attorney Chris Morales, filed a motion to vacate James’ conviction.

While it was apparently too late for them to build a case for a civil suit by the time the started looking into it since the statute of limitations had expired as of November 2009, the King County Prosecutor’s Office decided not to challenge the motion to vacate and, instead, has filed to dismiss the conviction against Simmons with prejudice.

Local attorney, Aaron Pelley with The Pelley Law Group, explained what this means for James.

Essentially, says Pelley, while dismissing the conviction with prejudice has the same effect as vacating the conviction as it means that, basically, as far as the courts are concerned he was never convicted and that, since the motion is with prejudice, he can never be tried over the same incident again. It doesn’t clear his record of the arrest and charges themselves, though, it may clear the way to have those expunged from his record too… which is something Pelley is meeting with James to discuss doing for him.

Gary Preble, the attorney who took up James’ case, says “We took this case because it appeared to be a clear injustice.” While Preble normally handles CPS cases and doesn’t do many criminal defense cases anymore, he was struck by James’ credibility and character when they met to discuss the case. “When I met with James… he was clearly a victim of injustice and very credible… I took this case because I believed we had a good chance of prevailing.”

While James is still struggling, homeless on the streets of Seattle, and even though he seems to have no chance at being compensated for the time he wrongfully spent behind bars or for losing everything in his efforts to defend himself from the now baseless charges against him… he does feel vindicated by this victory and more hopeful now that he might be able to move on with his life.

“At least now,” Simmons says, “I want to live again.”

Understanding and Improving The 2009 NPMSRP Reporting Maps

January 10, 2010 @ 2:51 AM by David Packman

Note: A new map page under construction, until then you can view our 2009 maps here and see our latest maps in our 2010 midyear statistical report here, thank you!

As part of the National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project’s 2009 Police Misconduct Statistical Report we generated a few maps to show not only where police misconduct occurred, but also how that translated into relative per capita rates of misconduct. However, it may help to go into a bit more detail about what these maps really show and why they were included in that report… and why we should have included even more.

First, The 2009 Police Misconduct Push-Pin Map:

9MonthPM

Despite the labels on some of the other maps that were made, this is the only true incident-based map since each push-pin represents a single report of police misconduct that occurred during the 8.5 month tracking period that the NPMSRP was active last year. The other maps show either per capita rates or the number of officers involved with reported incidents of misconduct.

This map isn’t that valuable except as an eye-catching way to show how much police misconduct occurs in the US within that period of time. It would have been more valuable if it were interactive and a visitor could zoom in and out of the map and click on each pin to see information about each incident. Unfortunately, the type of software needed to do that costs more than the NPMSRP, an unfunded independent project, can afford.

Next, The NPMSRP 2009 Localized Police Misconduct Incident Density Map:

As mentioned above, this map isn’t actually an incident map, it is a density map that shows how many officers were associated with reports of police misconduct within the reporting period at a county-level. That is to say, the number of officers working in agencies, city and county, located within a given county that were referenced in a report of police misconduct.

It should be noted that when reports mention incidents where unspecified multiple officers were involved, the NPMSRP makes a conservative estimate as to what that number might be. For example, the general rule is that a traffic stop where a report mentions more than one officer was involved will be recorded as involving 2 officers, a wrong door drug raid will be recorded as involving 3 officers, crowd control 4… As you can see, these are very conservative estimates.

The other problems with this map involve the color scale. First, the colors used for the scale were a mistake since the darker colors for higher number of reported officers obscures some locations where misconduct was prevalent. Namely places like smaller counties near state borders and independent cities like Washington DC because the dark purple is hard to distinguish from the state borders. Second, by topping the scale at 30+ it also obscures the fact that some localities had rates far exceeding 30 reports. In fact, some more than tripled that number. Unfortunately, these problems weren’t realized until the mapping was half-way completed.

This map was still under development when the 2009 preliminary report was released but may be included in the final report when that is published. The value of this map is debatable really, it would have been more valuable as a heat map that showed per capita misconduct density on a localized level but we just don’t have that capability since something like that would require specialized software. This map, just zooming into county level for number of officers involved, took 50 hours to create manually. So, as you can see, doing anything more complex than that would just be too time-prohibitive without software to aid the process. (and you can tell why I didn’t want to redo the scale after I was half-way through)

Next, The NPMSRP 2009 Police Misconduct Incident Map (State View)

NPMSRP_PMIM_2009 This map is similar to the localized map discussed previously in that it shows the number of officers cited in reports of police misconduct recorded during the active project period, April 2009 – mid-December 2009, last year. By itself, this map doesn’t really have any value and, in fact, can be pretty misleading since it’s hard to tell whether the states that are above average are above average because of their population size or if there is something else at play.

However, this map was included because it is valuable in demonstrating how the number of officers cited in each area translates into an actual per capita rate and can help people visualize why a state that doesn’t look like it has a problem on this map can still show an above average per capita misconduct rate. So, while not useful on its own, it can be useful if viewed side-by-side with the next map.

The NPMSRP 2009 Police Misconduct Density Map (per capita state level)

NPMSRP_PMRDM_2009 This map shows the per capita police misconduct rates at a state-level for the recording period. To specify, it shows the per capita ratio of how many officers per state were cited in reports of police misconduct as compared with the number of sworn law enforcement officers reportedly employed at all law enforcement agencies within that state.

While fairly valuable on it’s own, this map still runs into problems with people’s expectations. For example, a lot of people expect states like Illinois or California to rank high, especially when they live there and constantly hear about reports of police misconduct on a weekly basis. (Yes, weekly basis… some cities had more reports than the number of weeks that the reports were recorded). This is why the incident map was included, to help address those questions… however, there’s a problem with that, which is why the following maps that weren’t included are needed too.

The Police Officers Per State Map

PolicePerState This map is fairly self-explanatory yet, in and of itself, doesn’t really have any value if we can’t get any context to go with what we’re looking at. But, paired with our maps above, it tells us how a few reports in a state like Vermont can send the per capita misconduct rate for that state up to the top while the same number of reports in a state like California would barely register.

But, does that really mean anything? Well, statistically, only if the sample time frame is so short that an aberration can creep into the statistics. Otherwise, the per capita rate is what it is, that one state with a lower police population is showing a higher rate of misconduct when compared to the average, then that state is above average for a reason. Our reporting period for 2009 was 8.5 months, at the mid-point Vermont was at the top of the misconduct rate chart. Yet, a few months later, it dropped to third place. So, this tells us that our sample time frame was too short… which is why we hope to get a full 12 months done in 2010.

But… there’s one more map that will help complete the puzzle, because it can help tell us if the police per capita rate for a state is abnormal and, if so, how that might impact the statistics…

The Police Per Capita Map

PolicePerPop This map shows the number of law enforcement officers per every 100,000 people in each state, in other words, it’s a police per capita map. By itself this map can tell us if a state is dealing with criminal activity with a police-state mentality by throwing more officers, and thus more money, at the problem or if a state is doing something differently, or just can’t afford to keep so many expensive cops on the payroll.

However, in combination with the other maps, this map can help us determine if having over 81,000 police officers employed in California is overkill or about average for the state’s population. It can also tell us if that deviation from the average is also having an effect on the misconduct rate in some way, whether it might mask what would otherwise be a higher misconduct per capita rate if that state’s officer’s per capita rate were normalized, or if the low number of law enforcement officers might have an effect on police misconduct rates.

For example, law enforcement union representatives often suggest that high misconduct rates are caused by overworked police officers. If this were true, the maps would show a correlation between states with low per capita police officer numbers and states with high per capita police misconduct rates. If we compare the relative maps we see that this hypothesis is inconclusive in that some states with low per capita police rates have a higher than average police misconduct rate, but that this is not true in all cases and that the states with the lowest per capita police rates don’t have the highest per capita misconduct rates.

To sum it all up…

As you can see, a single map or chart can’t show us the whole picture of police misconduct… It takes a lot of work to paint a more detailed picture but, in the end, it’s worthwhile to do so. Its also clear that it will take a lot more work in the coming year for us to develop better reports and better ways to give people more valuable information about police misconduct in the US in ways that are easy to understand and visualize. That includes maps that are more interactive, more fluid, and filled with more pertinent information that will help us better understand the nature of police misconduct in the US.

Information that, hopefully, can be used to help address and reduce the rates of police misconduct that we see today. We hope the NPMSRP will be able to do that if we can keep it going through 2010.

Police Misconduct News Watch for 01-09-10

January 9, 2010 @ 12:33 PM by David Packman

Time once again for the weekly Police Misconduct News Watch where we review a few of the stories in the news over the last week as captured on our National Police Misconduct News Feed.

All This For Running A Stop Sign?

A West Valley Utah police officer is being sued by a man claiming he was picked up and thrown to the ground face-first by an officer who stopped him for allegedly running a stop sign. Apparently the officer tailed him without pulling him over until he got to his girlfriend’s house and then when he got out of his truck the officer turned on his lights. The officer then walked up to his truck, shoved him inside of it, then dragged him back out and shoulder-tossed him face-first into the pavement while holding his arms behind him so he couldn’t break the fall.

On the dashcam video that captured the incident the man asks why he was being arrested after being manhandled and the cop appears to say “you ran a red light.” When the man demanded to see the video to prove that the cop then seems to say “you’re going to be that way?” and shuts him in the cruiser while he begins to search the truck. Apparently the man was only charged with speeding and failure to stop at a stop sign.

The man, Ceasar Medina, has filed suit alleging excessive force and wonders if this wasn’t a case of racial profiling.

Popehat Covers Cop Rehired After Fired For Hanging & Kicking Partner

The guys over at Popehat gave us mention when they covered the story of a North Carolina State Trooper who was recently forced to be rehired after he was fired for hanging his partner, Ricoh the dog, off the ground while repeatedly kicking him. They have the video of the disturbing incident that, apparently, the North Carolina State Personnel Commission, didn’t find disturbing at all when they said firing him wasn’t justified.

Professional Courtesy Apparently Extends Into Retirement

New York City police are refusing to press charges against their former commissioner, Howard Safir, who allegedly backed his SUV into a pregnant pedestrian while he was getting out of his double-parked parking spot. The detectives who looked into the case say Safir didn’t do anything wrong when he hit the woman and then fled the scene because they say he wasn’t aware that he had hit her.

However, witnesses say they heard Safir’s wife warn him about the woman before hitting her and that, after hitting her, the woman confronted Safir about not paying attention to what he was doing and that Safir drove away after that while witnesses wrote down the license plate number.

The woman and her unborn baby were apparently ok and only suffered minor injuries. She didn’t know who had hit her even after detectives visited her in the hospital, instead she was told by reporters who interviewed her afterwards.

Speaking of New York…

New York City Police Officer Sean Spencer, who is no stranger to costing the city money after already sued four times for $80k, has cost the city another $35k for falsely arresting a grandmother with a clean history for allegedly being a prostitute and then lying on his report by insisting the woman had a previous history of prostitution arrests. The police union-hired attorney representing him says disciplinary actions are pending… but we won’t hold our breath since it’s not like he hasn’t done this before.

He’s like the Energizer Bunny of Sticky-Fingered Cops

A Dallas Texas police officer who was hired in 2002 despite being accused of theft at his former job as a cop, then fired in 2006 for stealing tires from the auto yard, then forced to be rehired by a judge on appeal is now suspended while under investigation for allegedly stealing the boots from a state police officer, apparently because they were shinier than his… not that the officer is much use anyway as the department keeps him off the streets since prosecutors cannot use him to testify.

What’s Worse? A Sticky Fingered Cop with A Gun

Minneapolis Minnesota police officer Timothy Edward has been arrested on allegations that he robbed a bank on his way into work after police discovered evidence from the crime in his locker. It doesn’t end there as it seems that Officer Edwards may also be linked to at least another dozen armed robberies in the area over the last two weeks.

Police Chief Tim Dolan has been quoted as saying he can’t believe this and has never heard of anything like it before… of course, it’s not like he really pays much attention when his officers are accused of misconduct so he’s probably not lying. Though it still would seem that he should be familiar with cops robbing people when his officers assigned to the Metro Gang Task Force caused a fiasco when they were caught confiscating money and property from all those innocent people for their personal use last year.

Remember, I Didn’t Hit That Guy… Or Else

Little Silver NJ police officer Steven Solari has been arrested on numerous charges including witness tampering and obstruction over allegations that he beat a man in custody and bounced his head off a metal filing cabinet while his hands were cuffed behind him… and then he visited a witness to the assault the next day, while in uniform, in an attempt to convice the witness to lie to investigators. In total he now faces 6 charges, the most serious could land him in prison for 20 years… but odds are he’ll get a good deal from prosecutors before then.

Quote of the Week:

“[The] tests don’t look at answers in the realm of society norms, but “cop norms.” In tests that look for the norms of general society, some of what a police officer displays might come off as pathological.”

-Dr. Stephen Ross, Psychologist hired to perform pre-employment psychological testing for Allen County IN Sheriff’s Department on why law enforcement agencies in Indiana use a test with different standards than other pre-employment psychological tests. -Via The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

Officer-Involved Sexual Misconduct Starts New Years with Surge in Cases

January 8, 2010 @ 1:56 PM by David Packman

William Grigg at LewRockwell.com wrote today about a few of the recent cases of sexual misconduct by law enforcement officers in the news over the last few months… it’s a good piece, I recommend it, yet he only grazes the very tip of the iceberg.

Of the 71 reports of police misconduct that we’ve tracked in the first 7 days of January so far, 15 have involved sexual misconduct by law enforcement officers, including:

Orlando FL – A police officer has been charged after forcing a lactating mother to follow him to a parking lot where he groped her breasts and then asked to suck them while working security at a bar where the woman was watching a show, but not drinking.

Hubbard County MN – The county has settled a lawsuit for $500k to a woman who claimed that an on-duty deputy raped her. That deputy resigned after the allegation but was never charged.

Grove City OH – A police sergeant has plead guilty to public indecency charges after caught masturbating at a Kohls department store when a woman reported him to security and video confirmed the complaint.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg NC – A police officer is facing numerous charges that appear to grow by the day as new alleged victims continue to step forward . Initially charged with sexually assaulting two women while on-duty, those charges expanded after another woman accused him of sexually assaulting her twice, once in front of her boyfriend who he arrested when he called 911, and then today by another 2 women who claimed he demanded to search them during a traffic stop for speeding and then groped them instead.

Sangamon County IL – A deputy has been sued by a woman claiming she was raped last January by that deputy at her home after he responded to her 911 call for help when she mistakenly thought her husband was stuck outside in his car in freezing temperatures.

Riverside County CA – A deputy has accepted a plea deal that will give him 1 year of prison for charges of assault with a deadly weapon, 2 counts of sexual battery, unlawful intercourse with a minor, and 2 counts of sexual penetration with a foreign object when he sexually abused his girlfriend’s 16yr old daughter.

Henry County GA – A deputy has been fired after arrested on charges of child enticement, molestation & statutory rape of a 15yr old girl. He claims the girl told him and his wife that she was 18.

Omaha NE - A police officer was convicted of online child enticement after caught by another cop pretending to be a teen, he’s to be sentenced in March.

Fredericktown MO – A police captain has been charged with 16 counts of statutory sodomy involving at least 3 children under 12, 14, & 17.

Hawaii – An Hawaii DPS deputy was arrested on allegations that he sexually assaulted a then 6 year old girl at least 30 times between 1992 through 1996.

Hamilton County TN – A deputy who was assigned as a middle school resource officer was charged with 2 counts of statutory rape of 15yr old student after a friend reported her suspicions.

St Louis MO – A police officer has resigned after being charged with 2nd degree statutory rape of a 17 year old girl.

Campbell County TN – A former deputy was arrested on multiple counts of sexual battery of girl under 13 years of age that he apparently molested for years while he was a deputy.

Baker County FL – A jail deputy was charged with sexual battery of a child under 12 after an unnamed relative turned in videos of the molestation acts that she found. He allegedly abused & made videos of the abuse for years and may have had other victims if the other videos found by police weren’t downloaded from the internet.

Even today there were more stories released, including one out of California where a West Covina police sexual crimes detective is accused of harassing an alleged rape victim for explicit photos and the victim’s sister-in-law, a police chief in nearby Baldwin Park, is being investigated for allegedly telling her to keep quiet about it.

Sadly, while this may seem like a strange surge in cases starting out this year, it actually isn’t abnormal. Last year’s statistical report revealed that sexual misconduct reports against police were the second most common type of police misconduct report for the 8.5 months that we tracked reports in 2009 and that nearly half of those 500+ sexual misconduct reports involved the sexual abuse of children.

Why is this type of misconduct so prevalent and why isn’t it likely that it will decline anytime soon? The answer probably has more to do with the prevalent cultures within law enforcement than with law enforcement agency policies themselves. Yet there is no definitive answer since sexual misconduct by law enforcement hasn’t been a well-researched topic, despite it’s prevalence and because it is one of the best kept secrets of law enforcement.

…and perhaps that’s a larger part of the reason why the trend is likely to continue apace this upcoming year.

This work by Cato Institute is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.