Scales Of Injustice: The Radargate Corruption Scandal
This is a guest post by Benjamen Ober, a student at Duke University in the Terry Sanford Institute for Public Policy.
Tim Shingara does not look like a man you would expect to be working for the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP). His shoulder-length hair, thick mustache, tight black t-shirt, torn jeans and intense stare exude the image of a motor-head, not a radio-telecommunications specialist lab technician, specializing in advanced radar operations.
Shingara probably looks the part of a Harley enthusiast because he is a Harley enthusiast. He is a police lab technician by day and a husband, father and biker by night. This more or less average guy’s world was turned upside-down as he was thrust into the midst of a Pennsylvania State Police corruption scandal dubbed “Radargate” by watchdog groups.
J. Michael Sheldon’s Lucky Find
Radargate and Shingara’s uphill battle against the PSP began on November 29, 2002. Ironically, Shingara himself had nothing do to with the beginning of the fiasco.
On that Friday evening, the day after Thanksgiving, Brent Hanlin was hurrying to his father’s hunting cabin in Perry County, Pennsylvania. It was getting late, and Hanlin wanted to get settled in for the weekend before rifle season opened on Monday morning. He was traveling northeast along PA route 533 in his 1994 VW Jetta. Ominous rain clouds darkened the sky and the road was already slick from earlier showers. To make matters worse for Hanlin, the lights on his VW dashboard had been flickering on and off for weeks and finally decided to die, making it difficult to gauge his speed.
As Hanlin passed an intersection, a State Police patrol car began trailing him from a distance. Hanlin noted the patrol car, but continued on without a second thought—he was the type of guy to drive 43 in a 45 zone “just to be safe.” Minutes later, the Trooper turned on his flashing lights and Hanlin realized that he was being pulled over.
The encounter that ensued was not pretty. Hanlin was informed by PSP Trooper Gregory Styers that he was driving in excess of seventy miles per hour. “Impossible,” thought Hanlin. Sure, Hanlin, might have been speeding. He could not exactly tell because his darkened dashboard. But seventy miles per hour? Fat chance. He curtly informed the Trooper that he was mistaken. The situation got worse when Hanlin could not produce either a registration or proof of insurance. Styers decided to detain Hanlin for the evening for a traffic violation and resisting arrest.
Hanlin hired prominent local attorney J. Michael Sheldon to represent him in court. Hanlin insisted that he was going forty-five miles per hour at the most. “Sure,” thought Sheldon, “that’s what they all say.” While driving home from his office, Sheldon was suddenly struck by a new thought: maybe it was impossible to hit seventy on the stretch where Hanlin was pulled-over, especially given the road conditions in a 1994 Jetta.
Sheldon visited the scene and determined that it was unlikely that Hanlin could have reached seventy miles per hour. On a flier, he contacted PSP headquarters and asked to speak with their lab expert on radar gun performance.
Enter Tim Shingara. Shingara was the local expert identified by the State Police for Sheldon to interview. Sheldon quickly discovered that he hit a legal jackpot. Shingara openly admitted that State Police radar guns are unreliable. Internal memos noted problems with the radar guns, especially the Genesis model guns, as early as 2002. On August 2, 2003, Corporal William LaTorre officially filed a memo to his superior noting that everything he aimed the gun at was registering seventy-eight miles per hour—including inanimate objects. A tree, rock, road, sky and moving car all registered seventy-eight.
Six months later, Sergeant Thomas Decker reported a similar problem to his commanding officer. According to Sgt. Decker, the Genesis gun would suddenly jump from the mid-fifties to the low-eighties without cause. Later, even after Radargate broke in Philadelphia and Harrisburg newspapers, field officers were reporting problems with the Genesis guns.
Shingara was subpoenaed as an expert witness in Hanlin’s case. According to Shingara’s testimony, the Genesis radar gun registered an “alternator whining” when plugged into a Trooper’s vehicle. Under intense electrical strain, such as the use of a radar gun, the alternator runs constantly in an effort to recharge the car battery. The constant running of the alternator produces an electrical disturbance that is captured by the Genesis gun. Out of the alternator whining, Radargate was born.
Institutional Failure
Radargate was potentially explosive for PSP. The costs would be extraordinary, both in public-image and sheer economic terms. The State Police own nearly one thousand radar guns, more than half of which are the Genesis model, produced by Decatur Electronics. Internal records show that State Troopers use radar guns in roughly eighty-seven percent of speeding tickets.
Records, do not, however, indicate which radar gun was used for issuance of each ticket. Thus, no one truly knows how many of the PA State Police issued tickets might be invalidated if the Genesis model is proven inaccurate. Since the first internal memos filed by Troopers in late 2002, motorists have been issued approximately two hundred thousand tickets—incurring total fines of more than fifteen million dollars.
The contracting arrangements between Decatur and the State Police are baffling at best. Decatur was chosen and the Genesis model selected because Decatur was the lowest-bidder for the radar contract. This is hardly atypical, as it is normal for state government agencies to award contracts to the lowest bidders. Shingara’s attorney Don Bailey thinks the problem is that government agencies such as PSP have budgetary pressures in conflict with public safety concerns. Bailey bluntly stated in an interview, “The Genesis II gun was a cheap gun.”
At the same time as Decatur’s radar gun bid, Ford Motors was contracted in early 2002 to supply new squadron cars for PSP. The “cost-effective” Crown Vic model was chosen, in spite of its low battery power. The Governor’s Office was thrilled with Ford’s Crown Vic bid, as PSP was saving the state thousands of dollars. For most cars, battery drain is a relatively minor problem, but squadron cars generally run a radio unit, laptop, lights, A/C, cell phone charger, and radar gun simultaneously. Drain on the battery can have dangerous consequences, such as stalling in the middle of traffic.
The government mismanagement of Radargate goes even deeper. Decatur Electronics acknowledged the problems in the Genesis model and recommended an easy solution to State Police brass. Decatur offered to fix all of the Genesis guns for free, absorbing a loss of thirty thousand dollars. Decatur was hoping to avoid public embarrassment and loss of reputation in the market. They could offer a solution and save face, as no one would blame Decatur for not predicting how the Genesis model would interact with future car models.
PSP, however, turned down Decatur’s offer to fix all of the units for free. According to Shingara’s lawyer, Don Bailey, the higher-ups of the State Police wanted to cover up any wrongdoing. If the State Police were found guilty of using faulty radar, the “implications [would be] enormous and quite significant cost wise,” said Bailey. The Governor’s office would inevitably respond by distancing themselves from the top officials in the Police Department.
In all likelihood, the administrative officials at the helm of the State Police would lose their jobs—and potentially jeopardize their mandatory service for the State pension plan.
Bailey, never a man to mince words, candidly asserts, “The reason for any kind of a cover-up of a bureaucratic mistake of any kind is very simple: careers are on the line…gotta get my career, my pension, gotta get outta here sorta thing…They were willing to let bad tickets be written…Probably the leadership at the top of the State Police doesn’t want to write bad tickets. It’s not that they want to do that or get any pleasure out of it. But the issue is, ‘How is my career going to be affected?’”
According to Bailey, the institutional pressure of budget politics and lack of government oversight created circumstances that lead to the organizational panic in which the police turned down Decatur’s simple, free, and easy solution in favor of a cover-up.
Part of the cover-up, in Bailey’s eyes, was a phony study on the accuracy of the Genesis radar gun. In response to Shingara’s testimony in the Hanlin case, the State Police commissioned a study on Genesis radar guns performed through a lab at the University of Pittsburgh. After the study was concluded, the State Police issued multiple press releases indicating that the radar guns had proven consistent and trustworthy beyond a shadow of a doubt. This seemed to assuage the public, as most citizens and media outlets were willing to accept these conclusions.
Unfortunately, it appears that State Police leaders were fudging the truth. Professor Marlin Mickle, the lead experimenter at the University of Pittsburgh, was unavailable for comment in this article, but has elsewhere claimed that the tests conducted in his department were neither conclusive nor aimed at gauging radar accuracy under field conditions.
Mickle says that the tests reflect Genesis radar performance in the laboratory, but the accuracy results do not necessarily transfer to the real world. When subpoenaed by Bailey, Mickle claimed that the State Police had not provided him any background on the on-going legal battle, nor suggested a field test versus a laboratory test. At any rate, police officials could breath a sigh of relief, as the momentary scandal of Radargate had passed.
PSP Retaliation
When the dust had cleared from the Mickle study and the public was placated, PSP turned its sights on Shingara, according to Bailey. Shingara was removed from radar detail, which was both a financial blow and a slap in the face professionally. Shingara was denied additional assignments at work, meaning that he went to work for months with absolutely nothing to do.
In Bailey’s experience, this is a common tactic of PSP officials to isolated and control whistleblowers (public employees who speak out against corruption or malpractice from within the department).
Over the next several months, it became increasingly clear to Shingara that he needed legal representation, prompting him to hire Bailey to sue PSP for unlawful retribution. In addition to being removed from radar detail and assigned no work, Shingara complained of other retaliatory measures, such as withheld promotions and subjugation to “an unfair internal investigation,” according to the lawsuit. Ultimately, Shingara claimed that the police were looking for an opportunity to fire him.
Bailey built a case focused on First Amendment violations by the State Police, which was subsequently filed in the U.S. Third Circuit. According to Bailey, Shingara’s case is a clear-cut example of First Amendment violation in the workplace. Shingara observed a problem in PSP that defrauded the public and compromised the integrity of the State Police. When J. Michael Shelton subpoenaed him, Shingara testified to problems within PSP.
In an interview, Bailey was quick to point out that Shingara had no economic motive for testifying against PSP. Shingara was not guilty of libel, as both internal memorandums and independent studies have vindicated his version of Radargate.
While Radargate was being argued at the Third Circuit (spring 2005), a related civil rights battle raged in the U.S. Supreme Court. Garcetti v Ceballos worked its way through the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and was finally argued by the Supreme Court in October 2005. The majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy (joined by Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito) ruled, “Statements made by public employees pursuant to their official duties are not protected by the First Amendment from employer discipline.” Richard Ceballos, the defendant in Garcetti, had a very simple analysis: “I think government employees will be more inclined to keep quiet [about corruption].”
New Dilemma of State Employees
In lieu of Radargate and the Garcetti ruling, police officers in PSP (and government employees in general) are caught in a bind. In Radargate, for instance, Shingara’s initial report to his superiors was co-authored or verified by at least nine other communications specialists. None of these nine men and women, however, have come forward to corroborate Shingara’s testimony. That is hardly surprising given the financial and professional repercussions reaped by Shingara.
The State Police have made an example of Shingara—“This is what happens to those who break rank and speak out against the State Police.” As if that were not incentive enough to keep quiet about government corruption or malpractice, the Supreme Court has removed even whistleblower protection from state employees.
In the case of Shingara v Skiles et al, the State Police holds all the cards. Institutionally, not many people testify against the State Police because of its reputation and power. PSP is a powerful and influential lobby in Pennsylvania, as evidenced by their Commissioner’s seat on the Governor’s cabinet.
The sheer disparity of power and funds for waging expensive legal battles creates a strong disincentive for insiders to exposure government corruption. PSP officials have virtually unlimited resources in terms of legal counsel. They have a special task force that specializes in handling the legal defense of PSP. Should these lawyers not have enough time or expertise to handle a specific case, it is not uncommon for the State Police to hire outside law firms to run the case.
Conversely, Tim Shingara, although not a poor man, is severely limited in his funds to pay for lawyers. Ironically, his salary as a lab technician was slashed by virtue of his removal from the radar detail and from other special assignments, the very sort of retributive action that led him to sue PSP. Fortunately for Shingara, he has enough money to put up a fight as a radio-telecommunications specialist, unlike many of the young Troopers in the force.
Bailey claims that PSP also has an advantage in terms of public perception. Shingara is fighting against image of the State Police. There is, according to Bailey, a tendency among the general public to view the law enforcement in almost binary terms. The police are the good guys and the accused are the bad guys. It would be impossible for individuals in the State Police, especially high-ranking officers, to be guilty of a systematic cover-up, even in a situation like faulty radar guns.
Looking Ahead
In the grand scheme of things, malfunctioning radar guns are not that important. After all, the cover-up could be for something much greater, like murder, money laundering, drug running, political corruption, or the like. The troubling fact is that, if Shingara and Bailey are correct, the State Police officials had the desire, ability, and organization to pull a cover-up, even on a relatively minor issue. According to Bailey, the current legal climate (especially post-Garcetti) provides further incentive for public officials to keep silence.
The question raised by Bailey is this: Who will speak out against government abuse if not government insiders? As a State Police officer, Shingara is legally forbidden to speak with any member of the media under the threat of being fired. PSP was unavailable for comment on this article. The University of Pittsburgh also refused to given comment on their study of the Genesis II gun and PSP interpretation of the study. Decatur likewise declined to comment on the accuracy of the Genesis II radar guns.
Radargate thus moves quietly toward its undecided, but impending legal conclusion. In July 2005, the U.S. Third Circuit Court ruled against Shingara. The Third Circuit determined that there was not enough evidence of retribution by PSP. Shingara and Bailey are currently fighting through the appeal process. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals will soon decide whether or not they will hear the case.
Regardless of the decision in the Court of Appeals, the losing side will inevitably appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court for final mediation. Shingara v Skiles et al would be an opportunity for the Court to revisit Garcetti.
In light of the outcry by civil rights groups and Congress alike, it is conceivable that the Court will vote to reverse Garcetti. The fates of Tim Shingara, PSP officials, and potentially millions of future whistleblowers thus await judgment.
Benjamen can be contacted at benjamen.ober@duke.edu.
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Dear Sir,
Is there any way I can receive acopy of the Genesis II Radar study done at Duke. Please reply as soon as possible since i have need of it before Jan. 20.
Thank you Tony
I attempted to fight this injustice through court and appeals, only to lose in the end. It’s a shame that nothing ever happened with this legally considering all the facts with the studies and the PA state police’s own internal memos regarding the cover up.
The trooper involved in my initial case (Alfred Weiss III) was completely clueless as to how the radar gun he was using even operated. He could not even answer simple questions as to what could cause a false reading and how to discern between true and false readings, information that is right in the owner’s manual for the GHS radar gun he was using! He objected to every question related to radar or simply stated he “did not know”. The magistrates and judges simply did not care. His word against mine. He even lied about where his car was parked, which was on a small access road in a corn field marked with a private property/no trespassing sign.
This story is even better. A couple years later I was pulled over again by another state trooper. A car had passed me at a high rate of speed towards the end of the Cross Valley Expressway coming into Trucksville on my way home from work. A state trooper was sitting right at the end where it drops from 45 to 35. The car that passed me slammed on their brakes and cut in front of me while I proceeded to slow down in 3rd gear. The trooper pulls out and starts following me, weaving with headlights and trying to get me to speed up or go over the lines while the car that passed me keeps speeding off. Finally the trooper passes me and goes after the other car. They were far enough ahead of me by now that I could no longer see them going through the rock cuts. I start coming up to the light at Alan Duke’s Garage and the trooper has the car pulled over in Alan Duke’s lot, but the trooper is stopped in my lane. As I’m coming up to the trooper I’m looking behind me and signaling to get in the other lane to go around, but cars are coming so I have to stop. Here is where it gets great! The trooper signals for me to pull over into the lot, so I do.
The trooper (Joseph J Parsnik) comes up to my car and I have all my papers ready. The first thing he says is “What’s that guys name in the car I just pulled over?” I told him I had no idea and how would I know? The trooper said “Well you have books on your seat and they have a Wilkes University license plate…you sure you guys didn’t just get out of class and are racing? I just clocked him going over 70MPH”. I proceeded to tell him I had no idea what he was talking about and that I was going the speed limit and that other vehicle had passed me and then slammed their brakes on. I then asked him if the radar gun he was using was GHS? He told me that he was using GHS and I then asked him if he knew about the reported problems with that radar gun? That was a bad move as it really set this trooper off.
The trooper proceeded to do a full inspection of my vehicle. He made me turn on all my lights, flash all my signals, wipers, etc. He then proceeded to tell me my license plate bulb was out, which I did not know and verified with him. He then gave me a ticket for speeding and for the light being out. I plead not guilty and went to court.
In court I was prepared to fight this ticket the same as the last, but when we went up to the magistrate the trooper wanted to cut a deal. Knowing the outcome would probably be the same as the last (me losing and having to pay a fine and get points), I decided to settle. The trooper brought up the radar accuracy issue which I initially questioned him about when he pulled me over. He stated that he was aware of problems with the particular GHS radar unit but they were problems reported in other troops out in Shickshinny (something I had never even heard of). He then dropped the speeding charge and just gave me the license plate ticket.
The real kicker is when we were leaving the magistrate’s office he told me to “never question a cop again because they are always right.” I put my serious face on and said yes sir…obviously just to appease him.
Last time I had to go through a check point, a young town officer did not like how I didn’t roll my window down all the way (isn’t half way enough?) and sent me to another area to take ALL of the field sobriety tests including a breathalyzer, which I passed with flying colors. Cops don’t care about your rights and they will abuse their powers even more if you let them know that you know your rights. Even the officer giving me the field sobriety tests (older cop) told me I shouldn’t be taking the tests unless the other officer had a valid reason such as smelling alcohol. When I told him the only reason was because of the window he told me I could file a complaint with the DA, who was in a tinted trailer video taping the tests. These types of injustices go on daily and the police constantly get away with it. It’s a shame there aren’t more good cops out there. The bad ones really make all cops look bad.
Hi,
I know the motorist who was involved in that unfortunate series of events involving the PSP. He initially found Mr. Sheldon because he felt a duty to his country to protect citizens from what he experienced. Of course, his issues stem from the radar cover-up that caused his initial unwarranted stop (the speeding ticket was dropped at his trial, so that Tim S. could not testify in front of his jury). But the reason he went to trial over this incident in the first place was because he experienced an arrogance of power that may have been feeding on the post-9/11 mood in law enforcement at the time.
He was pulled over by a police officer, something many motorists have experienced. He quickly did so. His window was down and his driver’s license was ready when the officer got to the car. He could not find his insurance and registration cards due to the bags he placed in the front and back seat and the two loveable geriatric dogs in the car with him (who he loves to call “Exhibit A” and “Exhibit B”). One card was later found under the bags in the back seat and the other was in the passenger side door panel. Even so, the officer had enough information to run through the system and find that the motorist was a law-abiding citizen. Instead the motorist was pulled from the car, searched and thrown to the ground. There were no fists, no resisting arrest, no attempts to escape custody. But he was in the middle of nowhere on a rainy night with no cars or people in sight. The police car did not have a video camera either. He was held overnight without the availability of a single phone call to his wife, 3 month old daughter, and grandmother at home to say he was alright.
There were two initial reports written by the arresting officer. The first one, written by the officer immediately after the arrest, portrays the officer demanding the motorist’s information and pulling the motorist from the vehicle. The second report, written hours after the first, omits such aggressive words, and instead portrays an obstinate and angry motorist. In the middle of the report, the officer politely asks again if the motorist knows where the pertinent documents are, and the motorist retorts, “Where do you think they are? They’re in the glove box!” The officer went on to say that the he feared there may have been a handgun in the glovebox. When the motorist read what the final police report was saying about him, he thought he had received a gift! For there was no glove box to be found in the old Jetta at all. This seemed like a tale told to explain why an ordinary law-abiding citizen would be extracted from his car, tackled and arrested for a supposed speeding ticket. Yet, the truth is a funny thing to prove, and everyone from the officers at the station, to the folks at the courthouse, to the DA, to the judge seemed to have an assumption that there had to be some good reason that the motorist was arrested. And the motorist was treated as such.
When the trial was over, the motorist was interviewed for a CNN story which aired, a Carlisle Sentinel article and a Philadelphia Daily Post article, but he then declined further interviews for the safety and privacy of his family. He resumed a very respectable life as an upstanding citizen, and he will always do so.
Mark you know this crap goes on all over the country to a greater or lessor degree and your right nothing gets done about it. If you monitor http://www.thenewspaper.com/ you will read that this stuff goes on and on and on and on, year after year. In very few cases is a officer held accountable.
As a general rule, if you like to abuse people become a cop. You’ll get away with it with impunity. Your lucky you didn’t get tasered to top it off. Cops and police departments know that if they intimidate complaintifs they lower the desire by others to file complaints against abusive behavior.
We had a case here in OK last year between a out of state driver who filed a complaint against a Highway Patrolmen allegedly for using violent and foul language on her during a traffic stop. OK turned around and wanted to have her extradited back to OK to file perjury charges against her. The attempt to intimate this lady didn’t fly. Fortunate for her the Louisiana Attorney General decided that OK did not have sufficient reason to extradite her. She filed a civil lawsuit against the officer too. She had several witnesses because there were two vehicles involved. Again this was veteran trooper who had a couple of awards for bravery or something and was held in high astem. There’s no telling how many other drivers he had done the same fowl way. This lady just decided not to take it. Although it was in the paper around here a couple times, it quietly disappeared off the radar. Many believe it was quietly settled out of court.
Mark, there are smarter people on here then me but my guess is that you need to be able to document this offending officers’ actions somehow. If he’s driving past your residence you should be able to get this on video as a good first step. If there’s a video in his patrol car, that should also be available….if he didn’t destroy it already. I’d get an attorneys’ advise too. We all should be greatful for people like you who will take the heat and intimation to fight such. Any one of us could fall into your shoes some day and suffer the same or worse consequences. These bad officers MUST be dealt with for everybodies benefit.
You might want to take a look at this; http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/19/1961.asp and see what one person went through and how he documented all of it. He suffered a lot of intimation also.
You may have heard on the news about this arrogant retired police officer up in Illinois who is alleged to have killed his last two wives. It’s pretty well been established that the first murder wasn’t investigated because he was a veteran police officer. His last or most recent alleged murder almost slipped past anybodies scrutiny if it hadn’t been for the victims family’s persistence.
Cops hold a tremendous amount of authority. Good cops protect bad ones. Bad cops exist in many if not most departments. Problem is there just seems to be no way to get rid of them. It’s one of my pet peeves about law enforcement. They’ve been given all this authority and little responsibility not to abuse it. Police departments are one of the few organizations I can think of who get to investigate their own employee’s and their actions. Human nature being what it is, what would you expect to happen? If my company has an accident or an incident there would be a swarm of federal investigators sweep down on us. Why are they treated different? It’s just insane to me that we don’t have better control over these powerful people. Good luck and keep us updated on your situation.
You left out a key word: ULTIMATELY we contol them. It is a very difficult fight but ultimately the legislatures who control the purse must answer to the voters.
I urge you to get video of these actions, complete with detailed notes of dates, times, names, locations, etc.
I once had a chippie force me off the road into the median, slightly damaging my car. Another chippie saw it and told where to complain. I did but the matter was settled “administratively,” which means they had a good laugh about the crazy citizen who was trying to correct a wrong.
This is response to James Young comment that we control them. This is not true.The state police in Pa. can do anything they want without fear of any repercussions for their actions!
I recently had the opportunity to find this out first hand.A state police trooper recently threatened to make me lose my job,my wife asked the trooper why he was threatening my job and the trooper told her “shut your mouth whore, if you open your mouth again you are going to jail”. I tried to call his supervisor and was told by another trooper that the officer in question “did nothing wrong and his word was golden around here”.I then called their internal affairs division and they mailed me a formal complaint form. I then filled out the form with dates times and witnesses that were present and mailed it to them.
About two weeks later my wife and I received fines in the mail for using foul language towards the officer.”We” used foul language? A few weeks later a I received a letter in the mail saying internal affairs talked with the trooper and he denied any wrongdoing.This trooper is now harrasing me and my family whenever he passes my house he slows to almost a stop and turns the siren on in his car.
I’m guessing its retaliation for me filing the complaint form that went nowhere. Case closed! My point is that the Pennsylvania state police are left to police themselves.They can do what they want when they want because the ordinary citizen is left with no place to truly report any violations whether it be ethics violations or something more serious.
Pretty shocking and just to gauge the cynicism we hold about Government worldwide not all that surprising either!.
What was the result of the inaccurate speeding fines issued. Will there be refunds? And what about the officers involved in the cover up.. has there been any prosecutions?
A news story in the Press here has a guy who pinged a speed camera. He organised a fake death certificate to get off the fine but was caught. He’s got a £200 fine, banned from driving and 1 year in prison for “perverting the course of justice”.
Damn right you may say but this Pennsylvania State Police cover up has similarities. Covering up wrongful fines on my books involves fraud (theft of money by deception), perverting the course of justice and contempt of Court.. and that’s before examining the issue of a laboratory test on the radar guns which doesn’t establish the truth of its accuracy in the field but still propogating a press release to say they’re accurate.
And the entire system has spat out a whistleblower who represents the only sane and hopnest part of this entire shabby story. What a way to represent the people!!
Wow! That story is pretty messed up, just goes to show how ego by a higher official can ruin people lives. I have seen police officers loose there jobs because the higher ups wanted them to forget about crimes because it came to close to hurting political campaigns. The officers chose to persue and open up scandals and found themselves without a job or transfered to another district with no hope of promotions.
Benjamen Oberhas written an excellent article exposing the injustices the common citizen faces. So the question left unanswered is, what do we as Joe Citizen do about this type of power?
You are all thinking that this is the exception in law enforcement. It is rapidly becoming the norm. They believe that image should rule over substance and will do anything to protect that image. More departments are losing their original purpose. The dollar and politics now rule what was once an honorable profession.
I find it sad and shameful that LE institutions would protect themselves at the very cost of those things that they are supposed to protect. I do not find it surprising.
Come on folks, it is up to us to make this kind of stuff stop. It will be very difficult and the entrenched powers will fight like crazy to protect their turf but keep in mind that we ultimately control them, not vice versa.