Fucking Cops: Volume II

[IATIA]

The former detective bureau evidence officer passed off handguns and rifles turned over to the department as his own and sold the weapons at two gun stores, Molinelli said in a statement.

See, there you go. I turn in my guns and the cops put them back out on the street. So, the guns are still on the street, but I no longer have one.

[Minimalist]

You're still safer without it.

Unless you're black and have a broken tail light and a cop sees you.

[Easy Guns]

I see in some places we are already there.

Thanks, Rock.

It's not in the article, but in Missouri, many counties are sending prisoners a "bill" for each day they stayed in the county jails... of course, in prison, they cannot work except at $40/month (max!) jobs, so the bill follows them back on the street, and may result in their reincarceration. While in prison, it means that whatever money they do earn (minus $5/month for soap, toothpaste, etc) is taken from their pay and sent to the county. It also means that if you fight your case, which may result in a minimum stay of 8 months (Speedy Trial limit in Missouri) or more likely a year or two (since Public Defenders in this state have the right to wave your Speedy Trial rights for you, and usually do because they're so swamped with cases, then tell you about it later), putting pressure on the defendant to plead out quickly so they don't stack up a bill. 

I filed cases on behalf of some of the inmates, claiming the practice is unconstitutional as a violation of Equal Protection, but none of them had made it to the appeals court ruling stage (local courts always shoot down the first round of inmate petitions, requiring an appeal, which has a "filing fees" of $90 at each level of court applied to, so $270 in total, not counting xerox copies and stamps to mail the numerous copies required to apply) by the time I got out.

If you're ever in Colorado and have the unfortunate luck of being arrested in San Miguel county and happen to visit the Telluride jail, you'll find that you're charged on a per day basis for your involuntary stay.

Been that way for at least 15-20 years.

[Easy Guns]

You're still safer without it.

Unless you're black and have a broken tail light and a cop sees you.

I think the cop threads are much better without the gun debate.

Can't we all just agree that cops are (nearly universally) pieces of shit?

[Minimalist]

"You can't always get what you want....."

[Minimalist]

But speaking of piece of shit cops.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-offic...porn-case/

Former "Officer of the Year" arrested in child porn case

Officer Michael Harding, who in 2011 was named "Officer of the Year" in Fort Pierce, Fla., joined the Port St. Lucie Police Department in 2012. Department of Homeland Security agents have been investigating Harding since July, when an undercover agent first encountered a user on an online Kik Messenger group, who allegedly posted two photos of a preteen female engaging in a sex act, according to a criminal complaint.

I'm surprised he doesn't call himself Officer Dick Friendly.

[Easy Guns]

"You can't always get what you want....."

I typically don't like to generalize so widely, but I really do think there's something about the position of a police officer that attracts a particular personality which should not have any kind of power over any citizenship.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/fami...10edfa778b

Man Jailed For Unpaid Traffic Ticket Suffers 'Excruciating' Death In Cell: Lawsuit

The suit claims deputies looked on via a 24-hour camera mounted in Stojcevski's cell as he withered away for 17 days, having been denied the medications he'd been prescribed (and was taking prior to his incarceration) to manage his drug withdrawal.

It's actually fairly common for them to deny medications to people coming into jails. One of my best (financially) suits was against Iron County, Missouri, for causing an inmate to have a heart attack by denying him his heart meds which were in his pocket when he was arrested, for well over a month, while he pleaded with them about it. They did the same thing, placing him in a suicide cell "for his protection" (*cough* bullshit *cough*), naked and freezing, and on camera, which is humiliating. He survived his heart attack, but had to have open heart surgery for it, and they sent him a bill for the surgery and hospital stay, and even for the guards who were detailed to watch him while at the hospital.  After making it past the initial stages of the lawsuit, designed to defeat inmate suits by making the legal standards to qualify for a claim for the exact same damages much higher than they are for an equivalent suit by a non-prisoner (it's called the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996, or PLRA, if you want to look it up), he was offered a large cash settlement to drop the suit and sign a nondisclosure agreement. You may sneer at him for taking it and "letting them off the hook", but without outside legal help, which is unavailable to prisoners because of other provisions of the PLRA which make caps so low on inmate suits that real lawyers won't take the cases unless they have $10K-$20K cash up front, it's very difficult to win, no matter how righteous their case, and even if you win, which may literally take a decade or more, a second suit is often required to get them to actually pay you.

A settlement is a Big Win, and gets immediate payment most of the time, which for a poverty-stricken inmate is enough to usually cause them to "break" and let the county/cops off the hook.

---

I also, of course, reference you back to how I was also hospitalized for want of the medications they failed to give me, and was told I almost went into a coma by the ER docs.

[Minimalist]

That's true of the settlement of any lawsuit.  It is also a major reason for filing a lot of them.  The system sucks and everyone knows it.

[Chad32]

I don't really understand what the point is, though, unless they're really just hoping the inmate will die because our jails are notoriously overcrowded. They're basically deinsentivizing people to actually surrender when they get caught doing something wrong. if you're likely to die in a cell, you may as well go out fighting.