Baltimore cop caught red-handed planting drugs, by his own body camera.

[nhbbear]

That takes a lawyer with skill and a defendant that can pay for one

I don't think it would be that tough if they were not found near the drugs.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

Holy shit! I feel like a child that was just told that Santa is not real. I am going to read the article, but I wanted to comment first. They should be fired! No question about it.





Oh, but that's after all three get arrested and charged with, oh let's see: false imprisonment, whatever the equivalent is for false swearing or perjury(for the criminal complaint), and as an extra fuck you, possession of narcotics. And all of these under color of law crimes, so they actually spend time in a penitentiary. I am actually sick to my stomach right now. Maybe they are telling themselves that it was to get a bad person off of the street(I am making an assumption there, but I doubt they would do this for some schmo slinging dime bags to college kids, that or this was something very personal), but this was so blatant, so brazen, I am really having trouble with this. I also just thought of some more crime- If they did it to get a warrant, burglary, and I am assuming they pointed their guns at people if they kicked in the door, maybe wanton endangerment or brandishing.

And, I am also having trouble with this on a different level, how could they pin this on someone? This is a back yard that anyone has access to, so this is also a shitty job because there is no way this would stick in court for just that reason. What a bunch of fucking assholes. Stupid fucking assholes that can't even plant drugs without fucking up. Now I have to go and read the story to see what happens.

Couldn't agree more.

First, cops come in all colors and all political varieties.

While the minimum requirements(high school diploma) are laughable, the job eats most people up and spits them out. Good cops are worth a much higher salary, and great cops are not paid nearly enough. Keep in mind that a higher salary may just be the difference between a cop calling it quits at 15 years versus gutting it out to finish their careers. Also, good cops are recruited by other agencies, so if you want to keep your good cops, you have to pay for them. The shitty part of that coin is that you end up paying shitty cops as well.

You were correct when you said back water cops make shit pay. I recently went to a training session where the chief of police was making 13 hour. He asked me about my pay as a lieutenant, and he guessed 18/hour. I felt so bad for him, especially since our cops start at 20. With that said, I still think I am underpaid, but I am a lieutenant responsible for a district of 15k people and most of the shootings, I have 3 people in a department of 72 that are above me. So, yeah, I want more money!

To build on Palis' post, I would like to see increased wages, incentives for college degrees or military background, and I want the profession to be more competitive, not only against other professions, but within all police departments. I think having that competition would make the city, county, or state have to fight for good quality applicants. You should see how departments fight over minority applicants or quality females. A great quality black male or a high quality female(bonus points if she is cute) are like saquatches. You hear tales about someone seeing them, but....never mind.


Right now, it is tough to get people to sign up to take the tests, let alone pass them. And if they do pass, including their polygraph, they have to make it through the academy. Since January, we have lost 4 that quit during the academy.

My point with that last bit, is if the job was more attractive in both pay and bennies, then maybe police departments could get enough officers to swell their ranks and could afford to get rid of the shitty or lazy officers. For the decent people that just suck at being a uniform cop, I am sure we could find something for them to do. But right now, we have them answering calls when we would probably be better off letting the k-9(I mean the dog) handing calls for service.

Shitty cops are one thing. Criminal activity on their part is another. So sure, raise the pay where needed. But when criminal conduct is uncovered then throw the book at 'em. Paying a guy low wages who is a lousy accountant because that's all you can afford, for example, doesn't mitigate embezzlement or tax fraud.

 

[7437]

I am not absolving them from what they did. I think that their defense could be corroborated, but there is nothing that will save them or this case, or prevent this man from getting a big settlement. It might not make sense to you, but for me, getting some of the background made me feel a bit better. I was seriously feeling ill after watching that because the idea that three cops would plan to arrest someone by planting that evidence sort of made me feel real icky about my profession. I am still not happy, but I feel a bit better. It will still hurt the profession because of these assholes and their "recreation" of the discovery of the heroin, even if they are found to be telling the truth about that, their credibility and the credibility of all law enforcement officers took a hit on this one.

Just think of if he actually knew how the camera worked. No one would know he and the other officers falsified evidence.

I for one straight dont believe him.

 

[Newave]

Fake news. Cops are always the good guys. Don't you listen to sheriff David Clarke in Fox News?

 

[El Che]

1. Pay cops more.
2. Hire more.
3. Have them work less hours.
4. Increase frequency of training.
5. Bodycams are mandatory, upgrade them to hold more footage so that they are on for the whole shift.

When I was a Sheriff, my main gripe was the hours. The hours are FUBAR and it really wears on you. Factor in dealing with pieces of shit all day, running around on a hot LA day in your uniform 8 hours in knowing mentally you have ANOTHER shift to do after (doubles).

The whole system needs a revamp but nobody wants to look at these factors, they just assume all cops are just pieces of shit like the officers involved in this case...

I agree on your first parts but I never assumed all cops are pieces of shit. I still think a majority of cops are good honest people, but there's a LARGE minority of bad cops.

My cousin who recently retired from the state police force here in New Mexico and is one of the nicest, good guys I've ever met. He said corruption is rampant in the force. Multiple times he had to be transferred to other areas because he fought with his CO or fellow officers when they were trying to do shady shit and wanted him to get in on it and he refused. Fighting as in physical altercations. My cousin is someone who took being a good cop seriously. He went undercover to help bust a heroin ring over a decade ago. He won all sorts of medals but had to constantly ask to be reassigned to other parts of the state because of being sick of the corruption.

His life was even threatened by a former Sheriff whose family ran a lot of the northern part of the state through politics. Finally a couple years ago that Sheriff got convicted of a whole slew of crimes and is in prison for 10 years now(should be life with all the bullshit he's done). That Sheriff tried to ruin his life and anyone associated with him(friends and family). Thankfully he got caught on a recording blackmailing some young kid and threatening his life over some dumb shit.

When good officers have to transfer out of certain places multiple times because they don't want to be part of the corruption, and having their lives and careers threatened by said establishment then that is a huge problem.

This is just one example of a clear systemic problem.

 

[Hollywood Jack]

Pretty certain the guy they "framed" was guilty of something or other.

Neither here nor there.

 

[freakyfarley]

And now he deserves to be separated from his family and the rest of polite society in a prison cell.

Its often said that its only a few bad apples but two others officers were watching this cunt and there's more




These so called bad apples are continually trusted to handle other cases by the state. When I see this I can't help but think its not about a few bad apples, the problem is the whole orchard is rotten.

When people say "just some bad apples", they forget the second part of the expression: they spoil the bunch.

 

[freakyfarley]

I wouldn't go that but far but I don't blame you. Personally I would never take the word of a cop alone in convicting a suspect but if it checks out with other evidence then I'm going to cut the cop more slack.

Why not? What if the cop feels under pressure to meet arrest/ticket quotas? There officially aren't supposed to be quotas in many departments but that doesn't stop them from existing.

There's a strong incentive to frame people for drugs, both from the cop's side as the prison industry's.

1) You catch more "criminals". (On paper it looks like you're a great cop doing a lot of busts.)

2) The prison industrial complex needs drug related crimes to fill up the buildings.

As long as framing people is incentivized this will continue to happen imo.

Can you even imagine how many times this has happened in city's like Baltimore, before there were bodycams? This really is the tip of the iceberg.

No surprise the community has a serious dislike of police officers when stuff like this has been going on for years and years.

 

[Hollywood Jack]

Good post.

First of all, I don't know this cops rank, tenure etc. I started off at about half off that pay, however due to OT I made fairly close. I can see a 15 year + vet making that easy with OT and even more if they are at or past LT status. Regardless, that cop should probably not be an officer anymore.

I don't want the taxpayers to foot the bill anymore than what we currently have but people want better cops? Ok, don't increase pay... HIRE more so we don't have guys running around at 60 hours a week, burning out, dealing with trash calling them WHITE SHIT and at the same time calling them racist.

So no, being a cop is not really high-salary. Sure it's fairly easy to get into, but it's even harder to maintain and be a good or even great cop. You start lowering the salary of cops and oh man, good fucking luck out there!

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Just to be clear, I don't favor lowering the salary of officers, I just question if the issue is that they don't make enough money. For instance, I used a middle class calculator tool to gauge what the Garner officer makes relative to other middle-class people in his area. He's on the HIGH end of middle class at a $118k salary (middle class ranges from $45,976 to $137,242 in his area). So cops are often making low 6 figures while public defenders are making half that or even less. And they also know that the taxpayer will always foot the bill if they fuck up.

I know this will never become a reality, but I imagine that if cops were suddenly saddled with being accountable for their fuck ups, police brutality would probably go down substantially. That said, I realize it's a hard job dealing with a lot of unsavory characters, that we usually don't hear about cops unless they fuck up. I've long believed that cops are only as good as the system they work under, so yeah let's work on building a better system.

http://money.cnn.com/interactive/economy/middle-class-calculator/

 

[AviatorShades]

They aren't good or evil. It's a job. It's like arguing about whether janitors or accountants are good/evil.

I will wait until the details emerge on this story though. The cops were definitely breaking protocol by turning the camera on and off but I wonder if they had already found the drugs earlier and just wanted to show where for the camera.

 

[freakyfarley]

They aren't good or evil. It's a job. It's like arguing about whether janitors or accountants are good/evil.

I will wait until the details emerge on this story though. The cops were definitely breaking protocol by turning the camera on and off but I wonder if they had already found the drugs earlier and just wanted to show where for the camera.

 

[Hollywood Jack]

I just read the article. So their defense is that they were recreating the scene where they found the stash. This was after seeing a hand to hand exchange, and the arrest of the dealer and buyer. So it's plausible that they did not bring heroin to plant on some guy. However, they still tried to pass this off as actual footage to be used as evidence. They still need charged and lock up-all of them. They would have been fine detailing how and when they found the stash, rather than "recreating" the discovery. Still pisses me off, but less than when I thought that they brought drugs to plant on someone.

Honestly, that sounds like something their union reps and defense attorneys cooked up as a cover.

 

[Gangsters_Paradise]

What a conniving little weasel why am I not surprised

 

[SleepyBoy]

I'm not surprised mother fuckas....

Been wrongfully arrested in Baltimore. Most of The cops there are complete garbage, which matches the city population.

Other cops will certainly look the other way as 1-2 cops go completely off the deep end.

Baltimore police is so far beyond fucked that they need a complete overhaul. Compare Baltimore police with DC police. Located within 40 mins, pretty much same population, same problems and high crime. Yet the DC police is about a million times more professional than the Bmore PD.

When I get pulled over by DC police I'm like I hope I don't get a ticket. When I get pulled over by Bmore police I'm like I hope I don't get killed.

 

[ShinkanPo]

Cop plants drugs in soup can in a yard, to implicate a suspect. His fellow cops watch on as he does it.
Cops leave the back-alley yard and come back to the street.
Cop who planted the drugs turns the camera on.

-
When body-camera is turned on, it keeps footage that happened 30seconds prior to unit coming on. Charges have been dropped against the suspect.

Now what would have happened to the guy if there were no body-camera or if this guy didn't turn it on. This is just the tip of the iceberg .


http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-ci-body-camera-footage-20170719-story.html

#Obosen

 

[SleepyBoy]

#JustAFewBadApples

The DA not revealing what this guy did , to the defense attorney in the other case, shows that the whole justice system is corrupt.

Yeah, but what about the prosecutor's win rate? That's way more important than the integrity of the justice system.

 

[OverCoronavirus Pressure]

I read today that the cop who put Eric Garner in what turned out to be a fatal choke hold is still employed with the NYPD and makes $118k per year. Cops make plenty relative to their level of education, experience, etc. I also find it funny how cops themselves and their supporters are supposed to be conservative but want the taxpayers to foot the bill for higher salaries and pensions, etc. Taxpayers also have to pay for all of their numerous fuck ups and the large settlements that accompany them.

That said, I don't want to totally shit on your post and you do raise some solid points. But yeah, being a cop is a high-salary blue-collar job, ample opportunity for overtime, free food, etc. So I'm not sure if low pay is the issue. Granted, if you work at some backwater PD then maybe it is. But then again, living costs are lower there and no one's forcing them to take that job.

"I can't stop committing crimes! "
Wait, that wasn't it.

Oh yes, "i can't breathe"

 

[Hollywood Jack]

"I can't stop committing crimes! "
Wait, that wasn't it.

Oh yes, "i can't breathe"

Charming.

 

[Fedorable]

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Just to be clear, I don't favor lowering the salary of officers, I just question if the issue is that they don't make enough money. For instance, I used a middle class calculator tool to gauge what the Garner officer makes relative to other middle-class people in his area. He's on the HIGH end of middle class at a $118k salary (middle class ranges from $45,976 to $137,242 in his area). So cops are often making low 6 figures while public defenders are making half that or even less. And they also know that the taxpayer will always foot the bill if they fuck up.

I know this will never become a reality, but I imagine that if cops were suddenly saddled with being accountable for their fuck ups, police brutality would probably go down substantially. That said, I realize it's a hard job dealing with a lot of unsavory characters, that we usually don't hear about cops unless they fuck up. I've long believed that cops are only as good as the system they work under, so yeah let's work on building a better system.

http://money.cnn.com/interactive/economy/middle-class-calculator/

45 to 137k is a heck of a range to be considered the same class.

 

[SleepyBoy]

If you want a career teaching in Baltimore City you need to have a college degree in teaching and pass a three part difficult exam called the praxis. To pass the praxis you must actually be very knowledgeable and have spent untold hours in class and studying at home learning ADVANCED concepts of education.

That's just to start teaching, if you want to continue to teach you have a limited time to get a master's degree in education or you won't be allowed to teach anymore.

To become a cop in the city of Baltimore, you need to be of age, clean record and have a pulse.