Latest update from the Philadelphia PD (previously on WCD):
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In totallly unrelated news, the WP has an interesting article on PappyGate.
Archive for the ‘Cops’ Category
Notes from the legal beat: May 15, 2015.
Friday, May 15th, 2015Not going to go there. Wouldn’t be prudent.
Friday, May 8th, 2015What prompts this? Today’s LAT:
Why the police shouldn’t use Glocks
I hate to be a wimp about this, but I don’t have either the time or the need to stress test my cerebral arteries this morning. I’m hoping that someone smarter than I am, like Tam, will take on this dreck: if not, maybe I’ll give it a shot at lunch.
What? What?
Wednesday, May 6th, 2015This is not an Onion article.
“The Masonic Fraternal Police Department”. You know what the difference between fiction and the real world is? Fiction has to be believable.
In other news…
Odd that these places with “looser” gun laws have lower crime rates. Also odd that this is tied to the death of NYPD officer Brian Moore, because…
Early one October morning in 2011, two masked men with gloved hands smashed their way into a roadside pawnshop in rural Georgia, fleeing with 23 handguns.
Four years later, on a street in Queens on Saturday, a man raised one of those guns — a silver, five-shot Taurus revolver — and fired three times at New York police officers. A bullet struck Officer Brian Moore in the face; he died on Monday.
Yes. The gun was stolen, so of course Georgia’s looser restrictions on gun purchases are at fault.
But the police are the only ones who can be trusted with guns!
Thursday, January 22nd, 2015Both officers were suspended for “accidentally” discharging their “patrol shotguns”. One was suspended for three days, and the other officer was suspended for one. (The reason for the difference is not clear. Based on the Statesman‘s reporting, it doesn’t seem that there were any injuries.)
Not gun related, but another officer is being suspended for 16 days. Apparently, he violated guidelines in his handling of a sexual assault case involving a child, and became “involved in a civil matter in violation of the department’s policy”. (These were unrelated offenses, just to be clear.)
Bad politician! No biscuit!
Thursday, January 22nd, 2015Heh. Heh. Heh. Part I:
Mr. Silver’s party affiliation is given early in the second paragraph. This bit of trivia is in the fifth paragraph:
Mike the Musicologist tipped me off to this story a while back, but I’ve been kind of waiting until something happened with it. Something did. Sort of.
The grand jury has also recommended charges of “false swearing” and “official oppression”. Ms. Kane’s party affiliation shows up in the fourth paragraph. And the newspaper in question is the Daily News (paragraph seven).
The problem here is that the grand jury recommendation is only advisory: the decision on actually filing charges is up to the local district attorney (“Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman”), and I’m not sure what the odds are on that actually happening.
I’m going to drop this in here, even though it doesn’t fit with the “bad politician” theme, because I don’t have a better place to put it. You may be asking yourself, especially in the light of past coverage on this blog, “What does it take to get yourself fired as a cop in Philadelphia?”
Well, we have an answer to that question:
Random notes: January 16, 2015.
Friday, January 16th, 2015I’ve written previously about Al Martinez and the “get the boy his peaches” story.
Recently, some questions were raised about the story over at Romenesko’s site. I didn’t post about this at the time because it didn’t seem link worthy: more “can anybody help me track down the original story” than “it never happened”.
Well, the amazing Larry Harnisch took up the gauntlet and managed to – more or less – track down the original story. Part of the problem seems to be that Al Martinez was working from memory, and apparently combined two stories into one: the dying boy and the peaches did take place, but not at Christmas. But there was another dying boy who craved watermelons at Christmas.
Quel fromage!
Random notes: January 15, 2015.
Thursday, January 15th, 2015Obit watch: Phil Africa, “a high-ranking member of the Philadelphia-based black-liberation group Move”. You may remember MOVE from the 1985 Philadelphia police stand-off and bombing. Phil Africa was not involved in that, as he was already serving time for killing a police officer in the 1978 shootout.
I’m just going to take a wild guess here and suggest he was wearing body armor because HE DIDN’T WANT TO GET SHOT!
(Oh, and for the record: both the gun and body armor were stolen from a sheriff’s deputy.)
Neat story:
Some more detail here and here. (Interestingly, at the time I’m writing this, that story is the most-read one on the WP website.)
Obit watch: December 30, 2014.
Tuesday, December 30th, 2014Mr. Dowd was the NYPD detective who led the task force that caught David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz.
This brought a smile to my face:
Ms. Begg [Mr. Dowd’s daughter – DB] said in an interview on Monday that her father had disdained television dramas about the police because they were unrealistic about police work — all except one, she said: “Columbo.” That series, especially popular in the 1970s, starred Peter Falk as an untidy, seemingly distracted detective in Los Angeles who solved cases by poking around in a practiced but random fashion and stumbling in the direction of a solution.
“That’s how it’s done,” she said her father explained to her.
What does it take…
Friday, December 19th, 2014…to lose your job as a cop?
If you’re the police chief in Phoenix, the answer is “insubordination”. Specifically, calling a press conference and demanding a new contract after the city manager said “Don’t DO that!” seems to be a sure way to get yourself terminated.
If you’re with the Austin Police Department, the answer is “running your mouth to a reporter”. Technically, Andrew Pietrowski “retired”, but it seems like his retirement was just ahead of “being canned by Art Acevedo”.
The way I read this, it wasn’t like Pietrowski was asked for his opinion; he just walked up to a reporter who was there for another reason and started spouting off.
The Taste of Schadenfreude.
Wednesday, December 17th, 2014From the Austin Chronicle‘s runoff endorsements for District 8:
How did that work out for you, Ed?
Oooooooh. Not so well.
By way of Overlawyered, here’s an Orange County Register article on the Costa Mesa PI case, which I wrote about a few days ago.
I was not aware that the law firm had shut down; that’s a good first start, but nothing in the article indicates that any of the lawyers involved have been forced to surrender their licenses.
Even after the phony DUI report, as the union attempted to distance itself form its former law firm – Lackie, Dammeier, McGill & Ethir – and the P.I.’s records show that money continued to flow from the union to the law firm to investigators.
The affidavit shows that even after the union said it fired its law firm, after word of the DUI setup got out, the union continued to pay its elevated retainer rate of $4,500 per quarter to the firm as late as January 2013. Lanzillo and Impola were paid by the law firm through January, as well.
Another thing I’m curious about: why does the Costa Mesa Police Department continue to exist? At this point, given that the department is clearly out of control to the point where they’re threatening politicians, wouldn’t it be better to disband them, fire everyone, and let the county sheriff’s department patrol Costa Mesa until they can build a new department from the ground up?
(Of course, this being California, many of the crooked cops from Costa Mesa will probably end up with jobs in the sheriff’s department or other cities in the area.)
Bad boys and losers: December 12, 2014.
Friday, December 12th, 2014Woohoo!
The PIs were working for a law firm that represented “more than 120 public safety unions”, including the Costa Mesa Police Association. I’m hoping that they roll, and that this ends with jail sentences and disbarment.
Philadelphia is currently 2-19. However, that might not be bad enough:
Has the NYPD been fabricating gun cases?
But what would be their motivation?
NYPD officers faking information to collect money from Operation Gun Stop? That’s unheard of!
Steve Adler.
Tuesday, December 9th, 2014We have our first response on the Art Acevedo question, from the Steve Adler campaign.
Since I didn’t state I would be publishing the replies here in my original email, I don’t feel comfortable doing so now. But I can summarize: as you might have guessed, it was the usual politician glurge.
- The City Council doesn’t hire or fire the police chief, the city manager does. (Perhaps so, Steve, but if the city council says they want the chief gone, I’m pretty sure the city manager takes notice.)
- Police officers need to be held accountable. (Also, apple pie and motherhood are good things.)
- “…we need to work diligently to improvement relations between them and the public”.
- Gratuitous Ferguson reference.
- Steve Adler has spent much of his life fighting discrimination as a civil rights lawyer yadda yadda yadda.
Not very satisfying.