Officer Bob

TAMPA — Retired Chicago PD Commander Jon Burge was picked up by those damn liberals in the FBI today. Guy was minding his own business out in the sun and next thing you know, he’s being hauled in for doing his job back in Chicago.  So he was enthusiastic about interrogations, so what?  Guy was fired in ‘93, what’s the point of dragging up all this old news?  Can’t a guy put a plastic bag over another guy’s head or rig up a guy to a car battery without making a federal case out of it?

A special prosecutors’ report paid for by Cook County and released in 2006 concluded that dozens of suspects had been tortured by Chicago police but that no one could be prosecuted because the statute of limitations had run out.

Today’s indictment gets around that legal problem by charging Burge with perjury, not with any instances of actual torture.

Burge denied any torture took place while answering written questions in 2003 as part of the lawsuit filed by Hobley, one of the alleged victims.

According to the indictment, the Hobley lawsuit included a specific allegation that police officers placed a plastic bag over Hobley’s head until he lost consciousness.

The indictment cites the questions and answers during the civil questioning, noting that Burge was asked whether he ever used torture methods–including beatings, the use of restraints or machines to deliver electric shocks–or whether other officers were involved.

Burge objected to the question as overly broad, and then answered: “I have never used any techniques set forth above as a means of improper coercion of suspects while in detention or during interrogation.”

In January, the city approved a $20 million settlement with four alleged torture victims.

According to the indictment, Burge was a Chicago police officer from 1970 to 1993, a detective at Area 2 police headquarters on the South Side from 1972 to 1974, and an Area 2 sergeant from 1977 to 1980.

From about 1981 to 1986 he was a lieutenant and supervisor of detectives in the Area 2 violent crimes unit. Later, he was commander of the Bomb and Arson Unit and later commander of Area 3 detectives.

WASHINGTON, DC: After reading this Washington Post story on GPS tracking by cops, I see some people got nothing better to do with their time than whine about how us cops have “too much power”. Alla you ACLU types had better get this straight: we do what we want to whoever we want whenever we want. And when there’s new technology like GPS out there, we don’t even need a warrant to use it.

You gotta problem widdat?

Across the country, police are using GPS devices to snare thieves, drug dealers, sexual predators and killers, often without a warrant or court order. Privacy advocates said tracking suspects electronically constitutes illegal search and seizure, violating Fourth Amendment rights of protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and is another step toward George Orwell’s Big Brother society. Law enforcement officials, when they discuss the issue at all, said GPS is essentially the same as having an officer trail someone, just cheaper and more accurate. Most of the time, as was done in the Foltz case, judges have sided with police.

With the courts’ blessing, and the ever-declining cost of the technology, many analysts believe that police will increasingly rely on GPS as an effective tool in investigations and that the public will hear little about it. Last year, FBI agents used a GPS device while investigating an embezzlement scheme to steal from District taxpayers, attaching one to a suspect’s Jaguar.
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“I’ve seen them in cases from New York City to small towns — whoever can afford to get the equipment and plant it on a car,” said John Wesley Hall, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “And of course, it’s easy to do. You can sneak up on a car and plant it at any time.”

Officer Bob takes us on a tour of the modern police command center, showing us who gets caught and who gets away.

 Officer Bob Episode #7 - The Complicated Art of Policing [1:52m]: Download (397)

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.

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.

Whatta world we’re livin’ in. It turns out that some guy down in Atlanta sold defective equipment to cops.

What gets me here is the very idea that a US company would sell broken gear to the cops or the army. What’s more, they allegedly took cops and Pentagon people to strip clubs to further the fraud.

Boy, it’s a few bad apples that spoil the whole bunch, innit?