That's what the FBI concluded: IMPD, the huge, streamlined, 21st-Century police force has Keystone Kops policies and procedures for handling certain types of evidence.
(All across the county, criminal defense attorneys are suddenly reviewing cases with an eye to appeal.)
So, the Feds claim, it wasn't the thin blue line being thicker than blood; it was just mental thickness? Like that's better?
Even inside IMPD, some police have a problem with that: "The families of the victims and the victims themselves have got to be just beside themselves. I mean, I don't blame them for not having any confidence in the police department. We're not making ourselves look very good here," says FOP nabob Bill Owensby.
Ipse dixit. And this doesn't even cover the most recent report of sloppy handling of the evidence.
(Dammit, most IMPD officers are honest enough, fair enough, decent enough -- but there are bad apples in that barrel and the rot will spread unless rooted out. It doesn't matter, really, if it's bumblers or malfeasers, they need to get the boot and quickly.)
Do you really want to win the appeal of a judgement against you based on the judicial finding that you are STUPID? Well, that's just what the 4th Circuit determined what Sgt. Bruce of the Maryland House of Corrections was when they said he did not have to pay. http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-4th-circuit/1075088.html
ReplyDeleteDid not even cost him his job. ::headbang::
stay safe.
It's pretty bad when the FOP criticizes it's own people.
ReplyDelete"(Dammit, most IMPD officers are honest enough, fair enough, decent enough -- but there are bad apples in that barrel and the rot will spread unless rooted out."
ReplyDeleteI'd really like to believe that IMPD is populated by good reasonable cops but lacking evidence I'm going to assume that they are mostly sociopaths just like cops everywhere.
Willy: well, it's just that whole possibility of, "Accidentally hit her head on the doorframe of the police car ten times while being put inside it after being mistakenly arrested during a traffic stop," thing that reins in the degree of my speculation.
ReplyDeleteThere are just a whole lot of ways in which "perfectly innocent mistakes" can be made by "loyal officers, honest to a fault" and I don't want to be on the receiving end.
We all know that our law enforcement agencies are as likely to admit error as the Chicago Jesus. This will never be fixed unless the entire system is dismantled and completely rebuilt. Entrenched bureaucrats and corrupt unions cannot be dealt with piecemeal.
ReplyDeleteOne corrective to police sloppiness is to properly fund the public defense lawyers. Take the OJ Simpson case, for example: even knowing that their evidence collecting would be scrutinized publicly by the best lawyers millions can buy, the LAPD couldn't help screwing up the chain of evidence. If they'd regularly faced, not great lawyers, but merely competent lawyers with the time to do a little investigation, they'd have understood what they needed to do to make the evidence unchallengeable. But when the PD's never have the time, or much motivation, to do more than negotiate plea bargains, then what does evidence matter?
ReplyDeleteThat's largely nonsense. Lawyers work at the command of their customers, who have purely personal agendas.
ReplyDeleteMy experience has been that very few defense cases improve with further investigation.
A FAR more effective technique for criminal defense is to insist on a jury trial.
But see paragraph 1.
No on ever doubted that IMPD messed up; the only question was whether the behavior was incompetent or criminal.
ReplyDeleteApparently, the FBI believes incompetent.
Now the question becomes at what level of incompetence does tolerating it become criminal negligence?