| |
|
|
Police Chief forges documents, steals house -- gets probation
|
by Kimberly C. Moore, Florida Today Feb. 8, 2007
Viera, Florida -- A judge found Melbourne Beach Police Chief David Syrkus guilty Wednesday of grand theft and principal to forgery. He was sentenced to two years probation.
"Because you are sworn to uphold the law . . . the public's confidence in us is imperative," Judge Lisa Davidson said. Davidson was responsible for finding him guilty or not guilty after he pleaded no contest.
Syrkus was charged almost a year ago with grand theft and principal to passing a forged document after it was discovered that his ex-wife's signature was falsified on real estate documents in 2000, giving Syrkus full access to $30,000 in profits on the sale of the couple's
|
|
| Comment: Forged documents allowed Police Chief David Syrkus to sell a house half-owned by his ex-wife. It's still not known who forged his ex-wife's signature, because the Police Chief ain't talking. And he's still the Police Chief -- the article says his career in law enforcement is over, but he's called the Police Chief, not the former Chief.
And his punishment? Probation.
Once again it seems, a cop's badge is the real-world equivalent of a "get out of jail free" card.
|
|
|
Still the Police Chief,
David Syrkus
|
|
marital home. Their divorce documents state that she was entitled to a portion of the proceeds of the Palm Beach County house.
Because he is now a convicted felon, Syrkus can no longer work in law enforcement, effectively ending his 24-year police career. He had been on suspension with the Melbourne Beach Police Department.
On Wednesday, Syrkus' ex-wife, Sherry Thomas, spoke before the judge.
"I had no idea that the home had been sold," Thomas said. "I feel that in the position that he holds, which is supposed to be protecting the public, not hurting them, he deserves some kind of punishment."
Syrkus also spoke on his own behalf.
"If I had to do it all over again, I would've sought legal counsel in selling my house," he said. Davidson asked him if he thought he was entitled to all the proceeds from the home's sale and he said, "Yes. I was told I had special equity."
The forged documents were notarized by Patricia Burke, who
was the town clerk of Melbourne Village. Syrkus was Melbourne Village police chief in 2000. Several Melbourne Village police officers and Syrkus' wife signed the documents as witnesses.
Although it was never determined who signed Thomas' name, Davidson asked Syrkus about the forgery, pointing out all the connections to Syrkus' job. He did not specifically answer.
"Even at this stage, Mr. Syrkus is not taking responsibility for his actions," prosecutor Dennis Craig said.
Through his attorney, Syrkus declined to comment.
"He's in one sense glad it's over and that's closure," attorney Alan Landman said. "On the other hand, he knows the impact it's going to have on his future employment."
Melbourne Beach Town Manager Jim Bursick said the search for a new police chief will start within days. Cmdr. Stephen Salvo of the sheriff's office has been leading the department since acting chief Dan Duncan resigned late last year.
|
Teen driver beats lying cop in court |
Jan. 20, 2007
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Seattle — A Shoreline teenager took on the King County Sheriff's Office and won, with a judge ruling Friday that she was not to blame for an accident involving a sheriff's deputy driving an unmarked police car.
In fact, the judge said the story of controversial deputy Joseph Abreu III simply didn't hold up.
"I did not find that he was a particularly credible witness," Pro Tem Shoreline District Court Judge Johanna Bender said of the deputy, who weeks before the accident had been found in an internal investigation to be cheating on his off-duty pay.
Defense attorney Michael Schwartz said the case never should have gone to trial.
"The prosecutors in any system -- here or anywhere else -- have to exercise judgment independent of the police," said Schwartz, who for 26 years was a prosecutor and assistant state attorney general. " It doesn't appear to have been done in this case."
The judge said she believed the defense witnesses, including an independent bystander who said he watched Abreu swerve his unmarked police car carelessly off a main thoroughfare, Northeast 145th Street, onto a side road where it struck Brown's Mustang while she waited to turn.
Another man who lives near the intersection testified that he looked out a window and saw Brown's car immediately after the accident, exactly where she said it was and not where Abreu claimed it was.
The Sheriff's Office and prosecutor produced no witnesses other than Abreu.
The verdict put smiles on the faces of Brown's family and friends gathered in the courtroom Friday. The family believed the stakes were much higher than the potential $153 traffic ticket.
Brown and her family said they were challenging not only Abreu's credibility, but also the credibility of Sheriff Sue Rahr and her department's internal disciplinary system. They resented having to bear the cost of the defense, which cost Krystal Brown's godfather, Wally Bornong, $4,700.
"Creating a situation that didn't happen is wrong, and they should have to pay for it," said Vicki Brown, the girl's mother. "I think there's a lot of shady stuff going on. The police are protecting their own, and the taxpayers, the good citizens, are getting screwed."
A sheriff's spokesman, Sgt. John Urquhart, declined to comment on the outcome of the case, except to say that the Sheriff's Office won't further investigate the incident unless Krystal Brown files a complaint. Vicki Brown said her daughter called the Sheriff's Office to file a complaint on Friday afternoon, a few hours after the verdict.
The case was featured in the Seattle P-I investigative series Conduct Unbecoming as an example of cases in which citizens believe they've been treated unfairly or retaliated against for complaining about officer misconduct.
"I'm really happy. I was, like, going to cry," said Brown, 19, who was a high school student at the time of the accident and who is now a community college art major.
"There was a gross violation of Krystal's civil rights, and it was intentional," said Bornong, who vowed that the family intends to seek further redress with the courts and the U.S. Justice Department.
"I think he thought he could take advantage of her, and he tried," he added.
Shoreline City Prosecutor Sarah Roberts retreated outside to smoke a cigarette immediately after the judge ruled. "I'm very disappointed," Roberts said.
She said she believed Brown committed an infraction, and disputed defense attorney Schwartz's claim that "the system just doesn't work if the prosecutor is acting as a rubber stamp for the police."
"That's ridiculous," Roberts said. "I'm not operating as a rubber stamp for the police or the sheriff."
"I feel the judge refused to look at the physical evidence in this case."
The "physical evidence" consisted mainly of grainy, almost undecipherable, photocopied pictures, taken by a sheriff's sergeant, Patrick Saulet, of a stop sign and the cars after the accident. Other photos were provided by the body shop.
Saulet testified he or the department destroyed the computer-chip record of the pictures after the accident, though he didn't know when. He said that was done because the Sheriff's Office routinely destroys photo records of fender-bender accidents.
Saulet has an extensive disciplinary record, and since the accident has been demoted from sergeant to deputy because of an unrelated investigation. He testified that he has worked with Abreu off and on for 20 years, though he said they don't socialize outside of work.
Schwartz complained that the computer record was destroyed around the time he was requesting it as part of his evidence gathering.
"This is at best sloppy and at worst questionable," the judge said of the destruction of the photo record, but she refused to dismiss the case on those grounds.
She also refused to admit testimony about Abreu's and Saulet's disciplinary records, when Schwartz tried to do so.
Neither Roberts nor the Sheriff's Office provided an estimate of the cost to taxpayers in pursuing the case, but Schwartz said "they had to have put thousands and thousands of dollars into this."
Shoreline Mayor Bob Ransom said he couldn't comment on the city's handling of the case because he hadn't followed it.
"I thought this was over a long time ago," said Ransom, who recalled a case in the late '90s in which Abreu was found to have entered the home of a City Council candidate and confronted her without a warrant.
Although the judge said she did not find Abreu credible, she added that didn't mean he lied.
The prosecutor's case relied to some degree on a claim by two deputies, Saulet and Deputy Amber Thompson, a nine-year veteran with a clean disciplinary record, that after the accident they saw debris from Abreu's car on the thoroughfare. That would suggest the accident occurred there, as Abreu claimed. Both admitted on the stand, however, that they didn't pick up or examine the debris. Thompson believed Saulet had photographed the debris, but no photos showing it were produced.
The Sheriff's Office assigned to the case two experienced accident investigators who normally handle fatal car crashes. They examined and surveyed the accident scene months after the incident and produced maps to scale. One of the investigators, Detective Jay Moloney, testified that the reported position of the debris indicated the girl was at fault. However, under cross-examination, he acknowledged that Abreu's testimony about the speed he was traveling and the time before impact when he braked wasn't consistent with the damage to the cars.
The defense hired Kay Sweeney, a forensics expert who co-founded the Washington State Crime Lab. He testified that he used photos of the car damage to reconstruct the accident, and placed the point of impact at the site where Brown's witnesses placed it.
But in the end, the failure by sheriff's deputies to collect evidence at the scene made all expert analysis irrelevant. The judge said she did not find the testimony of the witnesses, or Thompson, the investigating officer, "particularly helpful" because they were extrapolating from evidence that wasn't clear. That left everything up to the witnesses.
Schwartz said the city and the Sheriff's Office would have saved Brown's family and the taxpayers a lot of money had they simply done a proper investigation of the accident in the first place, which he believed would have led them to blame it on Abreu.
Shortly after the accident, Krystal Brown and her parents asked the Sheriff's Office to conduct an internal investigation into Abreu and the accident investigation. They sought to have the ticket quashed.
Rahr refused to open an internal investigation, saying she wouldn't do so until after the case was heard by a judge. Nevertheless, her office held a required internal hearing, a driving review, where without hearing any witnesses other than Abreu, three officers ruled that the accident was "non-preventable" -- which essentially exonerated the officer of blame for their purposes.
The ensuing accident review report concluded: "The Deputy (Abreu) was very candid in his recounting of the incident."
When sheriff's spokesman Urquhart was asked last year why the department conducted a driving review, and wouldn't also conduct an internal investigation, he said in an e-mail: "For the umpteenth time, the proper venue for Krystal Brown to argue her case is in court."
Urquhart admitted on Friday that, in an effort to challenge the P-I's coverage of the case, he used his desktop access to police databases to check the court history, going back two decades, on one of the witnesses in the Brown case. He insisted, however, that this was not an official act of "back-grounding" the witness for an investigation of any type.
Regulations prohibit the use of police computer databases for anything but official police business.
"He was not back-grounded, I can guarantee you that," Urquhart said. "I can run it (the witness' name) on my computer, I can have it (the results) in 30 seconds. That's not a criminal history. I can do it on anybody."
"Whatever the motivation, whatever the justifications, it is really kind of disturbing that they are going to these lengths," Schwartz said.
Belfast police covered up
Protestant outlaws' role in 10 killings |
Jan. 22, 2007
The Independent [London, UK]
London — Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan concluded that former officers in the secretive Special Branch paid informants in the outlawed Ulster Volunteer Force who were permitted to pursue killings, bombings, drug dealing and extortion.
Her 162-page report called for police to reopen dozens of cases from the 1990s and investigate ex-officers involved in cover-ups of their informants' crimes.
The commander of the predominantly Protestant police force, Chief Constable Hugh Orde, said he accepted O'Loan's conclusions and recommendations in full and offered "a wholehearted apology for anything done or left undone."
In the report, both Orde and O'Loan noted that the police force's intelligence-gathering arm had been drastically reformed since 2003 in hopes of ensuring such abuses never happened again.
In London, the official spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair called it " a deeply disturbing report about events totally wrong that should never have happened. The fact that they did is a matter of profound regret and the prime minister shares that regret."
Blair's secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Peter Hain, said UVF veterans and former police officers both should stand trial for crimes.
"There are all sorts of opportunities for prosecutions to follow. The fact that some retired police officers obstructed the investigation and refused to cooperate with the police ombudsman is very serious in itself," Hain said.
O'Loan, a Catholic with the power to investigate misconduct in Northern Ireland's police, was scheduled to hold a Belfast press conference later Monday.
Her report found that Special Branch agents covered up for Protestant extremists in an Ulster Volunteer Force unit based in Mount Vernon, a hard-line Protestant neighborhood in north Belfast, throughout the 1990s.
Her investigation started with the 1997 killing by that UVF unit of a 22-year-old Protestant man, Raymond McCord Jr., who had been a member of the paramilitary group.
The victim's father, Raymond McCord, said he had evidence that the UVF unit's commander at the time, Mark Haddock, was protected by police because he was on the Special Branch payroll providing tipoffs on UVF activities.
McCord said he turned to O'Loan after senior police officers dismissed him as "some sort of crank."
O'Loan's report concluded that Special Branch detectives turned a blind eye to several killings and other crimes committed by Haddock's unit because of the information they were receiving from him and other, lower-ranking UVF members.
The published report did not identify by name any of the retired Special Branch officers involved in collusion. A secret version of the report that includes these names was delivered over the weekend to Orde, Hain and a handful of other British officials.
One of the former detectives arrested and questioned by O'Loan's investigators, Johnston Brown, said many rank-and-file detectives were prevented from doing their jobs by a Special Branch elite that hoarded information.
Brown, who was a detective in the police's Criminal Investigations Division, said Special Branch colleagues repeatedly stymied his efforts to solve crimes involving members of the UVF and another outlawed Protestant group, the Ulster Defense Association.
In a statement, a group of former Special Branch officers rejected the findings. The ex-officers said they "always acted in the best pursuit of justice and had nothing to be ashamed of."
City pays to settle lawsuit after cop
forces teen girl to exercise topless |
Jan. 23, 2007
Pensacola News Journal
Pensacola, Florida -- The city likely will pay $35,000 to settle the claim of a girl forced to perform jumping jacks topless in front of a police officer to avoid arrest.
The Pensacola City Council's finance committee on Monday forwarded the proposed settlement to a Thursday vote before the full council.
The victim's attorney, Robert Bleach, said after the meeting that his client will be "glad to put this ugly incident behind her" and will use the money for her college education.
"She certainly didn't want to go through a trial and relive the whole thing all over again," he said.
Officer Shawn Patrick Shields approached a car parked beside Bayou Boulevard and discovered two partially dressed teenagers on April 19, 2003, according to a police report.
Shields, then 31, put the girl, 16, and a 19-year-old man in the back of his cruiser, threatening them with arrest for lewd and lascivious behavior.
The girl told investigators that Shields suggested exercise as a punishment and shined his flashlight on her while she did five jumping jacks.
| | Comment: And here's the utterly expected, perfeectly ordinary slap-on-the-wrist: |
Shields pleaded no contest to a criminal charge of extortion. He was placed on probation for two years in December 2003 and ordered to write a letter of apology to the girl.
| | Comment: I wonder what the punishment might have been if the perp wasn't a cop... or if the victim had been the judge's daughter... Helen & Harry PERMANENT LINK |
Police Chief John Mathis fired the officer, Assistant Chief Chip Simmons said Monday.
"Chief Mathis will not tolerate officers acting in a manner not consistent with professional standards," Simmons said.
Bleach said the city "wanted to do right" by the victim. He called Shields an "isolated rogue officer."
However, the victim was scarred by the incident, Bleach said. "Anytime she gets pulled over by a cop, it's going to be something of an ordeal for her," he said.
|
Rape victim arrested and jailed |
Jan. 30, 2007
The Tampa Tribune
Tampa — A 21-year-old woman told police Saturday that a man grabbed her off Howard Avenue and raped her behind a building during the Gasparilla festivities.
But officers investigating the case arrested her after learning she had an outstanding warrant from her teenage years for failure to pay restitution.
She spent the next two nights in jail.
Police are reviewing their policies after the arrest, which one victim's advocate said could have "a chilling effect" on the rape investigation, the woman's well-being and the desire of future victims to contact police.
The woman's family is outraged. "We're incensed. Everyone is just beside themselves," her mother, 47, said at 5:20 p.m. Monday, moments before escorting her daughter from Orient Road Jail.
The Tampa Tribune is not identifying the woman or her family because police are investigating a sex crime.
"You've got to make sure you throw somebody in jail on a four-year-old felony warrant after they've been brutally raped?" the mother said. "It was a failure to take the actual dynamics into play."
Her daughter did not speak to reporters.
Adding to the mother's ire is her claim that a jail nurse prevented her daughter from taking a second dose of emergency contraception prescribed by a nurse at a clinic as part of a rape examination. The jail nurse, said the mother and the victim's attorney, denied the medication for religious reasons.
Hillsborough County sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter could not comment about that allegation or anything else about the woman's medical situation because of the federal health information privacy act. However, she said all medications are confiscated from inmates upon their arrival until they are verified.
The police department in 2002 issued a legal opinion under then-Police Chief Bennie Holder that advised against arresting victims of violent crime on outstanding misdemeanor warrants.
"The goal of the policy is to avoid further traumatizing the victim of a serious crime," Assistant City Attorney Kirby Rainsberger wrote at the time. Officers should use discretion to balance "the severity of the injury suffered by the victim compared to the seriousness of the crime specified in the warrant," he wrote.
The policy does not advise whether police should arrest crime victims wanted on felony charges.
"It's rare in police work that someone isn't arrested on a felony warrant, but you always want to have compassion for a victim," police spokeswoman Laura McElroy said Monday. "This may be a case where we need to revise our policy."
Police supervisors did not learn the woman's circumstances until early Monday, after inquiries from the media and the woman's attorney, Virlyn "Vic" Moore III of Venice. At that point, police worked with Circuit Judge Walter Heinrich to grant her bail: $4,585 that a Sarasota County court said was unpaid in a 2003 auto theft and burglary case, McElroy said.
Moore disputed that the money was unpaid, calling it a "technical violation." The woman thought the matter had been resolved, he said.
The woman told police she went to Gasparilla on Saturday with friends but left about 1:30 p.m. She said she was walking north on Howard Avenue, back to her car parked at the University of Tampa, when a man grabbed her near Swann Avenue, dragged her behind a building and raped her.
McElroy said the rape was reported at 3:40 p.m., once the woman had returned to her car and told a friend.
Generally, in rape cases in which a victim does not suffer extensive injuries, it is standard procedure for officers to take the victim to a clinic to be examined by a nurse, McElroy said. If the victim is not at the original scene, officers will ask the victim to accompany them there to look for additional evidence, she said.
In this case, officers took the woman to a clinic on Busch Boulevard, where a nurse examined her and provided her with the 24-hour hot line for the crisis center, McElroy said. On weekdays, victim advocates from the police department provide referrals for counseling, McElroy said.
The woman did not have the opportunity to call the hot line, her mother and attorney said. As a jail inmate, she was allowed only to make collect calls. "She did not have any crisis intervention. Zero. None," her mother said.
McElroy said the woman tried to show police where the rape occurred but had trouble finding the location because it was dark. While en route, police learned through a routine check that she was wanted. Jail records show that the woman was booked into Orient Road Jail on Saturday for "failure to appear" on two felony warrants: grand theft auto and burglary. In fact, McElroy said, the "failure to appear" was recorded because of the alleged nonpayment.
Unsure of how to proceed, police drove the woman to a gas station at Howard Avenue and Kennedy Boulevard to consult with an acting sergeant, who determined the woman should be arrested, McElroy said.
| | Comment: Quick and easy question: Has this "acting sergeant" been fired yet? If not, why not? Helen & Harry PERMANENT LINK |
The woman's mother said she received a phone call about 9 p.m. Saturday from a female officer saying her daughter "was raped today at 2, but her name came up on a bulletin and I have to take her to jail."
In her opinion, the mother said, "The rape investigation has come to a screeching halt."
McElroy disagreed, saying that officers referred their report to the detective division. A detective tried to find potential witnesses Sunday but was unsuccessful, she said. The detective did not try to speak to the woman in jail Sunday because there were no "time-sensitive leads," McElroy said.
Bonnie Bucqueroux, a victims' advocate and coordinator of the Victims and the Media Program at the Michigan State University School of Journalism, said the handling of the situation could have "a chilling effect" on this case and others.
"This is one of those cases where they made the wrong call," she said. "Spending two days in jail … certainly adds to the trauma she endured. … Why would victims who had any concerns about any dealings in their past come forward?"
Cops who ignored woman's
miscarriage suspended ... with pay |
Feb. 2, 2007
Associated Press
Kansas City, MO — Two police officers were suspended indefinitely with pay Thursday as an investigation continued into their arrest of a pregnant woman who had a miscarriage a day after she was thrown in jail.
The suspensions came two days after police released a videotape showing Sofia Salva telling officers during her arrest last year that she was three months pregnant, bleeding and needed to go to a hospital.
The tape shows officers ignoring her pleas. After the ninth request, the tape shows, a female officer asked: "How is that my problem?"
The officers' behavior is "inconsistent with the values and policies of this department and inconsistent with the training they received in the police academy," Chief James Corwin said at a news conference Thursday.
Salva, 32, has sued officers Melody Spencer and Kevin Schnell and the police department for wrongful death and personal injuries. Salva is seeking actual damages exceeding $25,000 and punitive damages.
She was arrested February 5 and held overnight on traffic violations and outstanding city warrants. After being released the next morning, she delivered a premature baby boy who died immediately after birth, according to the lawsuit filed Friday in Jackson County Circuit Court.
Corwin said he felt the incident was serious enough to suspend the officers even though an internal investigation is not complete.
"I ask for patience from the community as we investigate this incident," Corwin said. "I regret that this incident has reflected negatively on the members of this department, the vast majority of whom do their job in an exemplary fashion every day."
Corwin read from a written statement and declined further comment, citing the lawsuit.
Salva's attorney, Andrew Protzman, could not be reached for comment Thursday. On Wednesday, he said, "It's tragic, it's disappointing, it's frustrating, it's sickening at times."
"This is a lady who was in severe medical distress and clearly needed emergency medical attention and medical treatment."
The videotape was released to the media after The Kansas City Star requested it under Missouri's open records law.
The officers stopped Salva after they saw her placing a fake temporary tag on the back window of her car. The tape shows Salva telling the officers she is having a miscarriage and is bleeding.
On the tape, an officer identified as Schnell walks away from the car and tells his partner: "She just gave me a line of excuses. She said she's bleeding. She said you can check her."
Salva said: "I'm three months pregnant and I'm bleeding."
The officer identified as Spencer replied: "OK. Why are you driving to the store and then putting a fake temporary tag in your car?"
"I took it because I want to go to the hospital," Salva said. The officers made Salva sit on the curb while they searched her car, purse and grocery bags. Salva again told the officers she was bleeding and needed to go to a hospital.
|
"Well," Spencer said, "that will be something you can take care of when we get done with you." The officers handcuffed Salva after learning she had outstanding warrants for mistreatment of children, trespassing and several traffic violations.
She again told Schnell she was bleeding. "I don't doubt that you're possibly bleeding, but you got a lot more problems with us," Schnell said.
No tapes were available of Salva's time in the jail, but she contends in the lawsuit that her continued pleas for help were ignored. The department said videotapes from that period had been recycled before it became aware of Salva's claims.
|
In wake of 2 fatal shootings, some question police tactics |
Jan. 29, 2007
The Florida Times-Union
Jacksonville — After police shot to death two men in eight days during separate undercover drug operations, Jacksonville's chief prosecutor said he questions the value of the stings.
"If we're just selling drugs to addicts, I don't know what we're accomplishing," State Attorney Harry Shorstein said. "This could wind up being the tragic death of one kid -- arguably a bad kid -- and a gentleman who had the right to protect his property."
Authorities are investigating the police shootings that killed Douglas "D.J." Woods III, 18, and Isaac Singletary, 80.
Police say Woods, described by family as a college hopeful who worked at two community centers, was shot dead trying to rob an undercover narcotics officer during a Jan. 20 drug sting at Sable Palms Apartments on Emerson Street. Singletary was killed Saturday -- the day of Woods' funeral -- after confronting undercover officers that he apparently confused for drug dealers doing their business outside his home.
Sheriff John Rutherford defended the undercover methods, saying police are trying to protect neighborhoods from drug activity. Saturday's sting, which posed undercover officers as drug dealers, netted five arrests, he said. Full details of the bookings were not available Sunday.
Rutherford said he's ready to rethink any investigative weaknesses that surface during the probe of the shooting.
"The tactics we developed are based on years of police experience," he said. "Even if the officers followed procedure, we'll look at this. We're always looking for better ways and safer ways to do our jobs."
On Sunday, police said details of Saturday's shooting remain unclear. Detectives Donald Maynard and James Narcisse have been placed on administrative leave pending the investigation, authorities said.
Micheal Edwards, director of investigations and homeland security, said it was too early to tell if the plainclothes officers identified themselves as police before the shooting started.
Also, there are varying accounts of how it started. Witnesses and some police accounts indicate Singletary thought the officers were actual drug dealers and that he was trying to remove them from his property with the assistance of a .38 caliber handgun.
Some of Singletary's gunshots hit a tree in the yard, according to police, but none of the officers were hit.
Police said Singletary was shot at least once before going to his backyard, where police shot him again after ordering him to drop his weapon.
Singletary, whom witnesses initially misidentified as Isaac Evans, is a man people in the neighborhood off Philips Highway know simply as "Pops." He stayed outside most days, sitting in a lawn chair or, if it rained, passing the time inside his dark blue Ford F-150 that remained parked in the driveway Sunday.
Singletary had a reputation in the neighborhood for chasing drug dealers off his lawn, family and neighbors said.
"I never would have thought he would have gotten shot by a police officer," said niece Sheree Bea. "I thought if he ever got shot it would have been in a confrontation with a drug dealer."
Family members said Singletary was a retired maintenance man from Winter Park who moved to Jacksonville in the 1980s to take care of his ailing mother and sister. On Feb. 15, he would have turned 81.
He loved to garden, family and neighbors said. His collard and mustard greens swayed in the breeze yesterday as officers showed up with metal detectors and note pads to continue investigating.
Gary Evans, Singletary's nephew, said the police presence didn't make him feel any better.
"It's upsetting because they're the reason my uncle isn't here anymore," Evans said.
Singletary and Woods both are black. In light of the shootings, Mikail Muhammad, local chair of the New Black Panther Party, said he's calling on his national leaders to help protest the Jacksonville police.
"Do we have not a right to come out on our own property?" he said. "Whether we have a weapon or not, police all over America are killing us. What are we supposed to do?"
Rutherford said his officers are trying to protect communities from drug dealers that plague them.
"We do these things to try to drive drugs out of the community," he said.
Edwards said the officers involved in both incidents are fortunate to be alive.
"It's a very dangerous job. We understand there is a segment of the community that doesn't agree with everything we do, but our goal is to make Jacksonville the safest community it can be," Edwards said.
|
Cop punished for being nice to homeless woman |
Feb. 1, 2007
Associated Press
Bradenton, Florida — A Bradenton police officer has been disciplined for insubordination.
Officer Nicholas Evans received a 30-day suspension without pay. In early January, Evans pulled a shopping cart with a homeless woman's belongings in it to the Port Manatee Jail and a second time to a pharmacy, hanging his arm out the window of his police cruiser to drag it. The normal 15-minute drive took more than an hour.
Evans had arrested the woman for violating a court order.
Evans dragged another cart for a few blocks the next night, which led to the insubordination charge, because he had been told not to do so after the first incident.
Evans' supervisor recommended his termination, but the police chief reduced that to the 30-day suspension.
Some homeless advocates say Evans should be rewarded, not reprimanded.
"He was trying to help somebody," said homeless advocate Martha Childress. "He was trying to do his job by arresting somebody, but he was trying to consider her as a person, as a human being."
| | Comment: If he'd hit her it would be 6 months suspension with pay...in other
words, a reward. Cassandra PERMANENT LINK |
|
|
"Nothing will eliminate [police corruption]. As long as you have police officers, you always have the potential for corruption. As long as you have human beings, there is potential for crime."
Los Angeles Police Chief
William Bratton |
| SPECIAL THANKS EMERITUS, LON GARM |
|
The bad news we're presenting here is, of course, only the tip of the tip of the iceberg.
As with any crime, only a tiny fraction of police misconduct is ever caught, and we can only guess what fraction of what's caught actually makes it into the newspapers, and of the rare police misconduct that is reported in the media, surely we stumble across only a tiny sliver.
Of that sliver, these are just a few selected highlights.
We welcome your clippings and comments; please send them to unknownnews at myway.com.
|
Why we're doing this:
Cops are very nearly worshipped in our society. On endless TV shows, in movies, police procedural novels, in the newspapers and on the nightly news, police are usually presented as virtue personified -- as if it's heroic to button up a blue shirt and pin on a badge.
It's not.
What some cops do while wearing the uniform makes them heroes ... and what other cops do, on-duty and off, reveals them as thugs.
Well, if you're looking for more news of police heroism, you've come to the wrong place. If you want to be told that the policeman is your friend, that cops are the good guys and robbers are the bad guys, you'll find such reassurance on every 'news network,' in every newscast around the clock, and in every cop show from Dragnet to NYPD Blue.
This page serves a different purpose, for anyone brave enough to face facts:
All cops are not heroes.
But because of the myth that "all cops are heroes," there's minimal call for disciplining bad cops, and maximal call for "forgiving," and "understanding" the tough work of being a cop.
And that's despicable. And terrifying.
Police work is tough. It's among the most difficult jobs in the world. And turning a blind eye toward police misconduct -- allowing crooked, corrupt, outright criminal cops to have long careers in law enforcement -- only makes it more difficult and dangerous for the good cops.
Letting cops get away with crime ...
... Or "punishing" police misconduct with long, leisurely paid suspensions ...
... Or probation ...
... Or sweet deals that allow a policeman's own police record to be expunged ...
... Or any of the other special treatments cops typically receive when they're accused of wrongdoing ...
... is assinine and counterproductive.
We'd like to see good cops get a raise, and bad cops held accountable for their crimes.
Any other policy is an invitation to savages and brutes -- to button up a blue shirt, pin on a badge, and break the law with impunity.
Helen & Harry HighwaterLINK
|
|
|
| |
| |
