Officer Bob

JOHNSON COUNTY, TENNESSEE - Yes indeedy, seems there’s hope for law and order inna land when you read stories like this. We don’t need people taking pictures of us, how many times I gotta tell ya? Maybe soon enough, I won’t have to. Down in Tennessee, the long arm of da law knows what to do with smart alecks who take photographs of police: arrest them.

Sure, it ain’t really illegal to take an officer’s picture — yet.

Johnson County sheriff’s deputy arrested Scott Conover for unlawful photography.

“He says you took a picture of me. It’s illegal to take a picture of a law enforcement officer,” said Conover.

Conover took a picture of a sheriff’s deputy on the side of the road on a traffic stop. Conover was stunned by the charge.

“This is a public highway,” said Conover.

And it was not a place where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy as Tennessee code states. The deputy also asked Conover to delete the picture three times.

“He said if you don’t give it to me, you’re going to jail,” said Conover.

Under the advice of the Johnson County attorney, the sheriff would not comment and the arresting deputy said he didn’t want to incriminate himself by talking to us.

In an affidavit, the deputy said he saw something black with a red light which he thought was a threat. Conover was also arrested for pointing a laser at a law enforcement officer.

“At no time did I have a laser. I had an iPhone,” said Conover.

SOUTH FORIDA: A pair of Broward County Sheriff’s Deputies are in custody and facing federal charges of smuggling coke, gold and using their badges to make a few bucks helping along the smuggling ring.  Geez, I guess the FBI has nothing but time on their hands now that they got that terrorism thing all wrapped up?

A Broward Sheriff’s deputy nicknamed “Wingnut” used his badge and expertise to aid a drug smuggling operation, then recruited a fellow deputy he said had a history of drug-dealing to help out, federal prosecutors charged Monday.

Deputy Richard Tauber, a 14-year veteran once fired for cavorting with prostitutes and unsavory characters — but later reinstated — and two civilian friends were charged in federal court with smuggling cocaine, diamonds and Krugerrand gold coins. A separate FBI complaint charged Deputy Kevin “Tattoo” Frankel with running surveillance for one of Tauber’s cocaine deliveries for $3,000.

Tauber, 37, of Boca Raton, was released on $600,000 bail. Frankel, of Lake Worth, is behind bars pending a bail hearing scheduled Thursday in Fort Lauderdale. Both men worked in Deerfield Beach. The two civilians, Robert Baccari, 38, and Christopher Provenzano, 37, both of Boca Raton, also are being held pending a Thursday hearing.

The arrests cap a 16-month month investigation of Tauber, who has a history of problems with the department.

Thank you, Times Online. For how long have we officers of the law labored under the suspicions of those very persons we are sworn to protect and serve? For too long. And now, you have put your finger right on the pulse of the problem.

When a police officer is swayed by temptation and surrenders to the urge to fill his pockets or to obstruct justice, he is not responsible for his own actions. No. The pernicious influence of social networking sites on the Internet, that’s who to blame.

It’s not just the internet that opens up the service to corruption. The ever-growing police family and wider use of volunteers gives more people access to information. “I am not saying community support officers are a source of corruption,” Cunningham says. “I am saying that as we open the doors to different staffing make-ups, we also need to be alert to people who are coming into the organisation, how they are vetted, how they are recruited and what access to information they have.”

As intelligence of organised crime groups advances, he proposes that intelligence of internal threats keeps pace because “corruption will thwart our ability to counter external threats”.

Thank you, Times Online, and thank you United Kingdom. Between writers as intelligent as yours filling your country’s newspapers, and that sophisticated way you talk, I might even consider forgiving you for fighting us inna revolutionary war.

LOS ANGELES - Well, it’s another case of meddling do-gooders up to their old tricks inna City of Angels. The cops just can’t win these days. Now there’s new anti-corruption rules about LA officers working in the gang or drug divisions having to submit financial statements to the department. And why is that? It’s because a few bad apples ruin it for everybody, dat’s why.

Look, just because a constable pockets a key of blow here or shakes down a neighborhood car theft ring there, that don’t mean they’re crooked. Hey, you want the money to go to the gangs? No you don’t. You want it to end up in the hands of criminals or do you want it to go to building decks on officers’ houses?

Look, if cops gotta start answering questions about how a guy making $34,000 a year in uniform is driving a new Escalade every year, then it’s a slippery slope. Next thing you know, they’re gonna be tappin’ your phone.

Down in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the water coming outta de ground ain’t the only thing too hot to handle. There’s also a chronic crime problem captured on this video. I forget which terror alert color it is when kids ride skateboards down a street, but this video’s got one of Hot Springs’ finest right on top of the problem, grabbin’ it by the throat in fact. Back off and let the hero do his work.

STATEN ISLAND, NY:  A fake police-training school was busted this week.  An ex-cop and his partner ran the school and did pretty well with it if you believe the story.

A Staten Island man was busted Tuesday morning for allegedly running a fake federal law enforcement training school out of his house — and distributing some 3,000 fake badges to his students.

Police say 49-year-old Robert, or “Roberto,” Neves was charged in federal court with distribution of law enforcement federal-style badges and identification.

A co-conspirator, Ralph Rios, was reportedly also arrested in Miami.

Police say Neves is charged with running the “U.S. Recovery Bureau” school, which offered three-day courses in Passaic, Brooklyn and Washington Heights.

After the training, students were given phony police badges, adorned with a United States seal.

He allegedly distributed more than 3,000 badges to his students, who were charged $860 for the course. But the students were never given background checks.

Neves was a police officer in the mid-1990s, but was fired for filing false police reports,

Lemme see, dat’s around $2.5 million paid by thousands of guys who want to get out there and push people around wit’ no authority to do so.   Somethin’ don’t add up.

What I don’t believe is that none of those 3,000 came back to the “US Recovery Bureau” school to shake down their trainers a little bit.  I mean, c’mon - even a fake cop has got to figure out what’s up every now and then.

So the word is the Amnesty International has got its undies in a bundle over de Chicago Police. They’re sayin’ that Chicago cops have a record of brutality and dat they’re considering protesting the International Oympic Committee about it.

Normally, their opinion would matter about as much as, well, ordinary Chicagoans’ opinions about the cops - little to none, thank you very much. But since the great City Dat Works is looking to host the 2016 games, and dat’s a lotta scratch thinking about coming to town, well, we’re all gonna pretend we care about brutality for a few months til’ this blows over.

Using Chicago’s Olympic bid as a pressure point and the alleged 2006 harassment of a gay man as evidence, Amnesty International turned up the heat on Mayor Daley today to fix, what it called the city’s “flawed approach” to investigating police brutality.

At a news conference outside the mayor’s office, civil rights activists reiterated arguments they made last summer, when the City Council approved Daley’s plan to sever the Office of Professional Standards from the Police Department.

They argued that the landmark ordinance is undermined by a union contract tailor-made to protect rogue officers.

The contract bars the agency now known as the Independent Police Review Authority from investigating anonymous complaints about “anything short of criminal conduct”—even though many victims “fear retaliation” from police—and limits the use of past complaints needed to establish a “pattern of conduct, said Wendy Park, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.

DENVER, CO: Well, it ain’t rocket science. When a guy savagely attacks an officer’s flashlight, shattering it with his back, then he gets what he’s got comin’. Lawsuit, yeah, whatever, I mean, good luck suing the department. What I wanna know is - how are you supposed to replace your favorite flashlight? It’ll never be just like it was.

The lawsuit gave the following account:

One officer threatened to shoot Vasquez in the back after Vasquez fled the scene. That officer then threw a police-issue flashlight that struck Vasquez with such force it shattered.

The youth tripped when confronted by another officer, and the first officer jumped on his back, shouting: “You (expletive) little (expletive), you made me break my flashlight.”

That officer then jumped on the teen’s back, punching him on the side of the head repeatedly despite protestations from the youth that his hands were behind his back.

Three other officers and Porter converged, repeatedly striking Vasquez and kicking him.

“Plaintiff begged the defendants to stop hurting him because he could not breathe and he was throwing up,” the lawsuit states.

It states that Porter then grasped the top of a fence with both hands and jumped up and down as Vasquez continued to vomit and begged for his life.

After handcuffing Vasquez, the police asked if he fell and how many times he fell.

The lawsuit states the incident stemmed from inadequate training of officers and a pattern of failing to discipline officers adequately.

PHILADELPHIA, PA Yeah, I can’t believe it either. In this traffic stop video shot from a helicopter, we see several of our brave boys in blue caught up in some terrible business.

As the video clearly shows, a car filled with offenders stops and one officer hurts his hand on the car door. The perps respond by remaining seated in the car in a very threatening manner.

Following that provocation, the perps in the car savagely attack the patrolmen, repeatedly scuffing the officers’ shoes and billyclubs with their heads and bodies.

As you can see it took at least four heroes to subdue the mad-dog driver.

SAN DIEGO, CA: Cops involved in human trafficking, drug smuggling, and protection - that’s what the San Diego newspapers are reporting is going on in Baja California.

Just another example of underpaid public servants merely trying to make ends meet. I guess this time the complainer isn’t some citizen busybody - it’s a high-ranking Mexican Army official.

What was the last war Mexico was in, anyway? Talk about having time on your hands…