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It’s not my intention to sow discord in our happy family. My opinion is only that, an opinion. I trust that you respect that, as I respect yours.
I rarely say something without careful consideration and, after careful consideration, I stand by my assessment.
If you go to Google and search for “dishonest cop”, you get over 9000 hits. Search for “illegal police activity” and you get 66,000 hits. Search for “dirty cop” and you get 83,000 hits. Okay, many of those are for sexy ladies Halloween costumes, but we’ll save that for another thread.
If you randomly pick through any of these (skipping the sexy ladies Halloween costumes, of course) you'll find hundreds of instances to back my opinion, but let me tell you about mine:
First off, except for the random traffic ticket, I’ve never run afoul of the law. However, my family and I periodically take in people in need, and one of them did run afoul of the law.
So one night, long after he had moved out, I get a knock on my door. It’s a passel of cops looking for him. They started right off lying to me, telling me “It’s just a clerical problem with a traffic ticket.”
I let them search the house. (I sometimes wonder, if I had said no, would they have admitted their lie and pulled out the warrant, but I’ll never know.) I told them he no longer lived here. I didn’t tell them where he was, but I told them how they could find him. That way, I could remain loyal to a friend and still help the cops. They promised to follow up and left
I thought it was done, but a week or so later there was a knock on the door. This time it was a different passel of cops. We went through the whole thing again, lie to me, search the house, etc. We told them we had gone through this before and why didn’t they follow-up on the information we had previously given? They didn’t know, but took it all again, promised to follow up and left.
So, a week or so later, there was a knock on the door. This time I got a little perturbed and, still politely, asked to speak to the officer in charge. After going through the whole thing again with the sergeant in charge, I elicited a promise that they would check the information we gave them and, if it was valid (which it was), they would not be back.
So about 6 weeks go by and there’s a knock on the door. This time I got pissed and demanded badge numbers. That’s when they grabbed me, shoved me into my house, and informed me that they were asking the questions. I, of course, didn’t physically resist. We had a less-than-polite exchange, where I used the words “incompetent pinheads” (which got me shoved around a little more) and where I suggested they go back and look up the information we had provided on the previous 3 visits. After my daughter picked up a camcorder and turned it on, they decided to take my suggestion and left.
I was pissed enough that I contacted the Professional Standards and Conduct Unit (PSCU) (the local version of internal affairs) and filed a complaint.
During the investigation of the complaint, they told the PSCU officer that they entered the house because they thought they saw someone fitting the description of the man they were searching for. (There was only my daughters and me in the house). The sergeant told PSCU that he hadn’t said what he said, and that he merely informed me of their rights as police officers. Ultimately, PSCU determined that “the incidents happened, but they were justified”. No police officer was reprimanded.
That pissed me off enough that I went to the independent police auditor. Apparently, since I wasn’t going away, the chief of police was informed. He contacted me and told me that they were changing their policy for processing warrants so that officers were forced to review past information and follow up before they try to process the warrant.
By this point, a year had gone by and I was tired of fighting a losing battle. So I didn’t ask why they had to force common sense. I simply thanked him and dropped it, which I’m sure was what he wanted.
So, the cops were dishonest from the start. They illegally shoved me around when I didn’t just meekly comply with their demands, and they lied to PSCU to cover each other’s respective asses.
Postscript:
The man they were looking for was arrested in a neighboring state where he had moved for work. He wasn’t trying to hide; they found him from his driver’s license address.
After sitting in jail for weeks, (and losing his job) he was extradited to here where he was arraigned. At the arraignment, he showed that he didn’t do what he was accused of. The judge immediately released him and chastised the police.
Turns out he had pissed off a detective so badly that, even though the detective knew he wasn’t guilty, the detective swore out the warrant anyway.
Again, I respect your opinion, but you’ll never convince me that cops are overwhelmingly good. I don’t think the dishonest, illegal actions of the cops toward me or toward the young man were any different than they would have been toward anyone else. I wasn't dealing with an aberration, I was dealing with a standard cop MO.
Postscript II: about a year after all this, the young man fell in love with my daughter and became my son-in-law. Things have a way of working out.
Sorry for the excessively long post. If you made it all the way to the end, I applaud your perseverance.
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You went there in that?!?!
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