Legal Commentary

Today in Law Enforcement

By TChris

Boston police officials are trying to investigate a website, Badgewars.com, dedicated to complaints against and by officers of the Boston police department. Police officials have "launched an internal affairs investigation to find out who is behind the website."

They also want to know whether the bloggers have any evidence to support the allegations they make about Boston officers violating department rules, such as abusing construction details or claiming false injuries to get time off work.

Here's a better idea: investigate the misconduct complaints that appear on the website, not the identities of the website owners.

Speaking of misconduct, albeit in a different city:

The NYPD declined to pursue more than one-third of substantiated complaints brought by civilians against cops last year, according to the Civilian Complaint Review Board. In 2007, the NYPD chose not to discipline cops in 102 out of 296 cases where the CCRB found misconduct by police - an unprecedented 34%. ...

"[The cases] were resolved with no disciplinary action taken against the officer," CCRB Chairman Franklin Stone wrote in a letter summarizing the annual report, to be published today.

Sure, not every substantiated complaint deserves discipline, but consider this:

Most of the complaints that were disposed of by the NYPD were against cops who were found to have illegally stopped and frisked citizens, but some involved cops wrongly using their pepper spray and nightsticks.

Stopping and frisking without legal justification is a civil rights violation. It's conduct that a free society should not tolerate. The unjustified use of nightsticks and pepper spray is even worse. For these acts, NYPD officers are getting a pass?

Full post as published by TalkLeft on July 07, 2008 (boomark / email).