Whipped Cream Difficulties

I don’t know why, but stories about cops committing particularly horrific crimes make me even more angry than I have any rational justification for. I’ve mentioned Antoinette Frank several times before; she’s a perfect example of the kind of thing I’m talking about, and I hope they get around to sticking a needle in her arm soon. I’m hoping for the same thing for the cops involved in the Danziger Bridge shootings, too.

But let’s move away from New Orleans for a moment. Let’s move to the north, and start with the DC area.

Richmond Phillips had a problem. He was accused of fathering a child with a 20-year old woman, and was scheduled to be in court last Tuesday for a hearing on paternity and child support. Phillips worked vice for the DC police, and he already had a wife and a 12-year old daughter.

What to do, what to do? Well, if you’re Phillips, you meet your baby mama in the park the day before the hearing, shoot her in the head, hide the body, load your baby up into baby mama’s car, drive the car away, abandon it, and leave your baby inside.

When an officer found the car Thursday, after the scorching midweek heat, the baby was dead. As police awaited autopsy results Friday, they said she might have died from the extreme heat in the car. Her body showed no clear signs of trauma. The car has tinted windows, one official said, so passersby were unlikely to notice the baby inside.

Let me repeat that. He killed the mother, and left a one-year old baby to die in a hot car.

I checked. Maryland does still have the death penalty, though it appears to be used rather sparingly (five executions since 1976, and five current death row inmates). Of course, Phillips is entitled to the presumption of innocence (though it seems like they already have a strong circumstantial case against him), but let’s hope the prosecutors don’t let this chicken shit asshole plea bargain down to life without parole.

There’s another recent incident that I’ve been meaning to note. Over the Memorial Day weekend, a sheriff’s deputy in Franklin County, Virginia, shot and killed his ex-wife, then led other police officers on an hour-long chase that climaxed in a shootout on I-81. This actually would not have come to my attention except that the shootout and resulting investigation backed up traffic for miles on the interstate: Sebastian from Snowflakes in Hell got caught up in the mess and blogged about it.

In addition to the cop gone bad angle, Franklin County is in the area around Roanoke, Lynchburg, and Bedford; my family has lived in that general area from time to time, so there’s a local angle to the story for us. The other interesting aspect to this story is the role of the rogue deputy’s department in the whole affair. Here’s the original Roanoke.com story on the shooting. Jake at Curses! Foiled Again! has been linking to the followup coverage: the sheriff’s phone call to the local police, holes in the timeline, and Jake’s first post, pointing out that the shooter had previous disciplinary issues but was still on the job.

According to today’s reporting, the sheriff apparently told a dispatcher “not to mention anything” about the deputy’s threats to kill his ex-wife. It’s looking more and more like the sheriff knew his guy was rogue, but thought he could calm the situation down and avoid public embarrassment. It’s also looking more and more like the embarrassment of having one of your guys taken off the street doesn’t compare to the embarrassment of having your guy shoot several people, and having the local citizens demand your resignation.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 4th, 2011 at 10:43 am and is filed under Clippings, Cops, Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.