This is what happens to some when they choose to stand up and report internal corruption within law enforcement.
Frank Serpico, Police Officer Played by Al Pacino, Looks Back - NYTimes.com
This blog was created solely for my students to generate intellectual dialogue with their classmates. Reach one and teach one. Peace.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Former Edison Police Director Brian Collier dies in apparent suicide | - NJ.com
He is a former colleague that I worked with several years ago. Again, for those interested in the law enforcement profession, mental health is also an aspect of the job that you must deal with during your career.
Former Edison Police Director Brian Collier dies in apparent suicide - NJ.com
Former Edison Police Director Brian Collier dies in apparent suicide - NJ.com
Friday, February 12, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
Bye bye Bernie.
U.S. Asks Kerik’s Judge to Send a Stern Message
By SAM DOLNICK
Federal prosecutors on Monday painted a damning portrait of Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, as a corrupt official whose “egotism and hubris” led him to commit crimes that would upgrade his lifestyle.
The allegations were laid out in a 61-page memo sent to Judge Stephen C. Robinson of Federal District Court in White Plains recommending that he sentence Mr. Kerik to a term that “sends an unmistakable message” about public officials who break the law.
In November, Mr. Kerik pleaded guilty to eight felony charges, including tax fraud and lying to White House officials. Under a plea agreement, both sides recommended that he serve 27 to 33 months in prison. Judge Robinson is scheduled to sentence Mr. Kerik on Feb. 18.
Mr. Kerik’s defense team filed a memo on Monday requesting leniency, and asked the judge to consider Mr. Kerik’s “extraordinary and meteoric rise from truly humble origins wrought with hardship.”
Mr. Kerik’s lawyer, Michael F. Bachner, filed dozens of letters attesting to Mr. Kerik’s character, many of them from retired police officials who worked alongside him.
Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who launched Mr. Kerik’s career by naming him police commissioner and recommended him as the Bush administration’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security, did not submit a letter on his behalf.
The defense memo described a strikingly different man from the unscrupulous figure outlined by prosecutors. Mr. Kerik’s lawyers praised his “extraordinary public service,” and said his legal troubles had left him “tormented by daily guilt and remorse” and “plagued by enormous debt and mounting legal fees.”
Hector J. Santiago, a retired police detective who worked with Mr. Kerik in the late 1980s, wrote that Mr. Kerik had taught him “discipline, honor and integrity,” and was “one of the toughest guys on the team, yet he always treated people with compassion and respect.”
While the defense memo focused on Mr. Kerik’s dramatic biography — he has written that his mother was a prostitute who abandoned him — the prosecutors’ memo reviews in detail Mr. Kerik’s crimes.
Besides tax fraud and lying to White House officials, Mr. Kerik sent city police officers to Ohio to conduct research for his 2001 memoir, “The Lost Son: A Life in Pursuit of Justice.” The prosecutors pointedly quote a passage from the book that describes Mr. Kerik’s pride in receiving the commissioner’s gold shield.
Much of the case against Mr. Kerik is connected to the $250,000 in renovations to his home in Riverdale, in the Bronx, which included a Jacuzzi in the master bathroom, a designer kitchen and a marble-tiled entry rotunda.
Their memo also discussed the character and personality of Mr. Kerik, a brash and commanding man who led the Police Department through the 9/11 attacks with a tough-guy charm that won him admirers and critics alike.
“The defendant’s egotism and hubris were the tragic flaws that led him to commit the considerable number of crimes to which he ultimately pleaded guilty,” the memo said. Mr. Kerik “became a wealthy man by shamelessly exploiting the most horrific civilian tragedy in this nation’s history.”
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Sodomy revisited through Michael Mineo
On Aug. 9, 1997, more than three years into Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s first term, a 30-year-old Haitian immigrant named Abner Louima was arrested and brutalized by a white police officer inside the restroom of the 70th Precinct station house in Brooklyn. The attack became a national symbol of police brutality and fed perceptions that white police officers in New York were harassing or abusing young black men as part of a citywide crackdown on crime.
One officer, Justin A. Volpe, admitted in court in May 1999 that he had rammed a broken broomstick into Mr. Louima’s rectum, and then had thrust it in his face. He said he had mistakenly believed that Mr. Louima had punched him in the head during a street brawl outside a nightclub, but he acknowledged that he had also intended to humiliate the handcuffed immigrant. He left the force and was later sentenced to 30 years in prison. The commanders of the 70th Precinct were replaced within days of the assault.
As the legal case wound on, Charles Schwarz, a former police officer, was sentenced in federal court in 2002 to five years in prison for perjury stemming from the torture case. A jury found that Mr. Schwarz had lied when he testified that he had not taken Mr. Louima to the station house bathroom where the assault took place.
Mr. Louima, who was born in Thomassin, Haiti, on November 24, 1966, and immigrated to New York in 1991, won more than $8 million in settlements with the city and the police union. Afterward, he moved to Florida.
Mr. Giuliani denounced the assault, but many black leaders have held him responsible for the aggressive policing they say prompted the attacks.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)