• Cleveland police officer David Anderson’s attorney says he is a “good public servant and outstanding police officer.” Prosecutors say he is a “serial abuser of women.” He’s currently out on bail and on suspension awaiting trial.
• “The list of bad cops who have been fired for violent behavior but won their jobs back — with back pay as if nothing happened—after binding arbitration is striking,” writes Steven Rosenfeld:
Recent examples include a Washington state officer who was fired for excessive Taser use and filing false reports; a Philadelphia lieutenant fired for punching a woman in the face at a parade and arresting her after mistakenly believing she threw beer on him; a Rhode Island officer who followed two women home in uniform and exposed himself; a Miami officer who shot and killed an unarmed man sitting in a car; an Oakland officer who threw a stun grenade into a crowd that was trying to help a protester who had been shot by police; and more.
• We’ll see if a North Charleston, S.C., police officer is able to get his job back with back pay down the line. Right now he’s suspended without pay after being arrested for domestic violence. He allegedly beat up a woman and threatened to plant evidence against members of her family if she didn’t agree to get an abortion.
• Meanwhile, former police officer Don Paul Bales of Fort Smith, Arkansas, is suing to get his job back after that whole business with the stealing from prostitutes before arresting them. Let me clarify — Bales did not steal from the sex worker, another officer did, an undercover officer named “J.B.” Bales’ only involvement was reporting what J.B. did to his superiors, and doing that cost him his job.
J.B. met “a suspected prostitute” at a local motel and agreed to a rate of $150/hour. The undercover cop then took off his clothes and “allowed the woman to perform sex acts on him,” after which he arrested her. Bales found out about this practice and reported it to his superiors, whereupon he learned that: A) this is perfectly legal, routine police practice in those parts of Arkansas; and B) the Arkansas police don’t like snitches. So Bales was fired. And J.B. still has his job because Arkansas police are horrible scum who prey on women because they can. The End.
• “What the soldiers discovered when they entered the [shooting] range made them angry: mug shots of African American men apparently used as targets by North Miami Beach Police snipers, who had used the range before the Guardsmen.”
• “Let’s just get this over! Race war, Civil, Revolution? Bring it! I’m about as fed up as a man (American, Christian, White, Heterosexual) can get!” That’s what Metro Detective Bobby Kinch of the Las Vegas police department had to say on Facebook. “I think we need a cleansing!” he added.
Det. Kinch still has his job. And to anyone who thinks his calls for ethnic cleansing suggest some racial animus underlying his approach to police work, Det. Kinch has a reply: “That’s pretty retarded,” he said. To a newspaper reporter, on purpose, and on the record.
• It seems that some of the Sheriff’s Department officials who run the Los Angeles County Jails may be headed to prison.
• Three San Antonio police officers were suspended briefly after they struck a man more than 50 times, breaking his teeth and causing him some $15,000 in medical costs. This violent beating was administered despite the man complying with all of their orders and doing nothing to resist as they subdued him.
But viciously beating a man for no reason isn’t why these San Antonio cops were suspended. They were suspended because they viciously beat the wrong man for no reason. “It was a case of mistaken identity,” their chief said.
• Jason Barthel, an Indiana police officer and the owner of South Bend Uniform, is eager to inform the rest of the world that he is also a grade-A a-hole. To get that message out there, he’s been selling T-shirts that read, “Breathe Easy: Don’t Break the Law.” You know, because if Emmett Till hadn’t whistled at that white woman, he’d still be alive today.
Barthel’s company has sold about 45,000 of the shirts, so there’s apparently a whole stadium-full of people out there who find it reassuring to be told that they probably won’t be killed as long as they never break any laws.
Interestingly, this argument never works for people who are videotaping police activity — a perfectly legal act that police officers tend to find unsettling. Trying to reassure the police that if they don’t violate the Constitution, they have nothing to be worried about and can “breathe easy” being videotaped doesn’t seem to change their mind about that.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In