He wants to draw attention from
the city he's actually mayor of, as the NYPD continues to melt down...
The case against Detective Arbeeny was rooted in a far larger tale of corruption in Police Department drug units: several narcotics officers in Brooklyn have been caught mishandling drugs they seized as evidence, and hundreds of potentially tainted drug cases have been dismissed. The city has made payments to settle civil suits over wrongful incarcerations.
During the trial, prosecutors described the corruption in the drug units that Detective Arbeeny worked for. One former detective, Stephen Anderson, who did not know the defendant, testified that officers in those units often planted drugs on innocent people. Mr. Anderson has pleaded guilty to official misconduct over a 2008 episode involving drug evidence and now faces two to four years in prison.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, indeed. The only thing that would surprise a person who had ever even heard of the NYPD in maybe the past hundred years is that there are so many indictments, let alone convictions. NYPD is so famously corrupt that given a choice between falling into its hands or that of some other New York street gang, I'd have to ask for time to think it over.
Balko covered something similar a few days ago in a piece titled, "NYPD Cops Demand the Right to be Corrupt," and he wasn't even being all that hyperbolic:
A three-year investigation into the police’s habit of fixing traffic and parking tickets in the Bronx ended in the unsealing of indictments on Friday and a stunning display of vitriol by hundreds of off-duty officers, who converged on the courthouse to applaud their accused colleagues and denounce their prosecution.
As 16 police officers were arraigned at State Supreme Court in the Bronx, incensed colleagues organized by their union cursed and taunted prosecutors and investigators, chanting “Down with the D.A.” and “Ray Kelly, hypocrite.”
As the defendants emerged from their morning court appearance, a swarm of officers formed a cordon in the hallway and clapped as they picked their way to the elevators. Members of the news media were prevented by court officers from walking down the hallway where more than 100 off-duty police officers had gathered outside the courtroom.
The assembled police officers blocked cameras from filming their colleagues, in one instance grabbing lenses and shoving television camera operators backward.
Yet these are the people with all the power, the people to whom we are blandly expected to bend the knee. Gangs like NYPD and LAPD may be more blatant, but it doesn't get much different no matter where you go. And the one thing that's certain to come of it is that nothing will change - except to continue to deteriorate.
1 comment:
The irony of the whole fiasco is that the prosecutors that in all likelyhood looked the other way when they knew evidence was fabricated and perjury the norm, are probably the same prosecutors working on the cases against the officers. Maybe there is a corruption olympics in NYC and they are going for team gold medals?
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