Things that make You go....Hmmmmmmm ??

Police corruption spreading, prison statistics show
By Jack Nelson and Ronald J. Ostrow / Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON -- In greater numbers and in more places than ever, police are succumbing to the temptations posed by huge sums of cash from illegal drugs.
Official corruption, which has raged for years in the nation's big cities, is spreading to the hinterlands. So rampant has it become that the number of federal, state and local officials in federal prisons has grown fivefold over the last four years, increasing from 107 in 1994 to 548 today, according to the federal Bureau of Prisons.
Although only a tiny fraction of the nation's law enforcement officials are behind bars, the increase in their numbers reflects a harsh reality: Despite the government's "war on drugs," the problem is defying concerted efforts to stamp it out.
"It's a big problem across the country, in big towns and small towns, and it's not getting any better," said Michael W. Hoke, superintendent for internal affairs of the Chicago Police Department. "Dope dealing is probably the only growth industry in Chicago's inner city," he said, and some police officers can't resist the temptation to siphon off a share for themselves.
Hoke was head of the force's narcotics unit until three years ago, when officials, suspecting that some officers were deeply involved in the drug rackets, put him in charge of internal affairs to begin an investigation that is still under way.
"So far, we've sent 15 police to the penitentiary," Hoke said. "And we're not done yet."
Hoke and police officials of 51 other major cities are meeting in Sun Valley, Idaho, this weekend to review a new report, "Misconduct to Corruption," compiled by officials from 15 cities with assistance from the FBI.
The authors of the report sent questionnaires to all 52 cities. Of the 37 that responded, all acknowledged continuing problems with general corruption and misconduct in 1997.
Altogether, they reported 187 felony arrests of officers and 265 misdemeanor arrests. Eighty-five officers were charged with illicit use of drugs, 118 with theft, 148 with domestic violence and nine with driving under the influence of alcohol.
The report cited several cases of officers' robbing drug dealers. In Indianapolis, one of two officers charged with murdering a drug dealer during a robbery admitted that they had been robbing drug dealers for four years.
A big-city police chief, the report concluded, "can expect, on average, to have 10 officers charged per year with abuse of police authority, five arrested for a felony, seven for a misdemeanor, three for theft and four for domestic violence. By any estimation, these numbers are unacceptable."
Los Angeles, New York, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Washington, New Orleans and Savannah, Ga., are among cities that have experienced major law enforcement scandals involving illegal drugs in recent years. And many smaller communities, especially in the South and Southwest, have been hit by drug-related corruption in police or sheriff's departments.
"You can't just look at the numbers" in measuring the effect on the community of "a police officer abusing citizens through corruption," said Neil J. Gallagher, deputy assistant director of the FBI's criminal investigative division. "Corruption erodes public confidence in government."
Gallagher, as special agent in charge of the New Orleans FBI office several years ago, directed an investigation that led to convictions of 11 officers and a sweeping overhaul of the city's police department. Underlying causes of corruption there, he said, ranged from "severely underpaying officers to lack of training, poor selection of officers and very little command and control."
Some veteran police executives said that, despite recurring reports of corruption, they have the impression that the problem of police corrupted by drug money has subsided somewhat in recent years.
In this camp is Robert S. Warshaw, associate director of the National Drug Control Policy Office at the White House and former Rochester, N.Y., police chief. Warshaw said that law enforcement agencies have become much more aware of the problem and "there's a high level of accountability internally."
Many other experts see little or no abatement of police corruption. "It's going on all over the country," said former San Jose, Calif., Police Chief Joseph McNamara, "and corruption ranges from chiefs and sheriffs on down to officers. Every week we read of another police scandal related to the drug war -- corruption, brutality and even armed robbery by cops in uniform."
Even veteran officers can succumb. One is Rene De La Cova, a federal Drug Enforcement Administration supervisor in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., whose photograph ran in newspapers from coast to coast in 1989 when he took custody of Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega from the U.S. military forces who had captured him. Five years later, De La Cova pleaded guilty to stealing $760,000 in laundered drug money and was sentenced to two years in prison.
New Orleans, which had one of the nation's most corrupt police departments in the early 1990s, is widely recognized today for its reforms -- a sharp increase in hiring standards, pay increases of up to 25 percent and a reorganization and restaffing of the internal affairs unit.
New Orleans officials, working with the FBI, uprooted the bad cops and tightened controls that not only curbed corruption and drug dealing but also helped reduce homicide and other crime rates.
In the FBI's New Orleans sting operation, undercover agents acted as drug couriers who were protected by police officers. The situation became so violent that at one point FBI agents overheard a policeman using his bugged patrol-car phone to order another policeman to kill a woman who had filed a brutality complaint against him. Ten minutes later, before the agents could act, the woman was shot to death.
An FBI memo on the killing noted that the undercover operation was terminated earlier than scheduled "because of the extreme violence exhibited by the officers, which included threats to kill the undercover FBI agents acting as couriers and also to steal the cocaine being shipped."
Eleven officers and a civilian police employee were convicted of corruption and about 200 police officers were fired.
In another major FBI sting operation earlier this year, 59 people in metropolitan Cleveland, including 51 law enforcement and corrections officers, were arrested on charges of protecting the transfer or sale of large amounts of cocaine.

Gary’s article on Maria Ohl’s hearing yesterday is excellent !

The murders of; Billy Pruin in April of 1995, Jodi Huisentruit in June of 1995, Gerald Best in January of 1999 and the unexplained death of Don Milks in April of 2011 do stretch the bounds of coincidence since all of these people had information about illegal drugs and/or drug related murders. Maria’s fears are also not without merit.

Read the link to the article. Sounds like Maria Ohl did excellent police work- recording everything. Hope she makes it available to the public so everyone can hear.

She seemed poorly prepared and somewhat confused as to the purpose of the hearing. Agreed, counsel would have helped her sort through things. You usually win reinstatement on narrow, technical grounds.

Using the civil service hearing as a forum to air the Jodi and Philpott stuff was probably a mistake, for her. It highlights exactly where they did have good reasons to fire her - insubordination, etc. She's admitted to behavior that is textbook inappropriate for a law enforcement officer and everyone is acting like they don't know why what she did was wrong.

Following procedure, as frustrating as it can be, is the only thing that gives police officers their legal authority. Going outside the chain of command, and outside the department's jurisdiction, here's someone who may have illegally searched private property. On the unlikely prospect that she had found something incriminating, it may have been ruled inadmissable as evidence, along with anything else the police learned on the basis of that illegal evidence. If someone had been brought to trial in Jodi's case, he might have walked because the evidence was improperly handled. "Fruits of a poisoned tree." Not good police work. At all.

So if the emphasis is on her actions on the issue of Jodi, my feeling is that Ohl is toast. The only way I can see her winning here is if they chalk it all up to her extreme mental distress, and consider that distress to be service-related. Usually there's a different classification for discharge from civil service due to service-related disability than for firing due to cause (how this works in Iowa, I'm not terribly sure).

This is how it works in Iowa !!

Well Folks, this hearing wasn't really about Jodi. It was about Ohl. Don't be surprised if any information she recieved about Jodi is ignored.

So, we continue with the never ending cover-up.

Pray Ms Ohl will be safe and share some of the pieces of the puzzle with the right people. Atleast tell someone honest where Jodi is suppose to be buried.

Well we just have to wait 2 or 3 more years for a new set of eyes to review the case.

Interesting read:

In a deposition filed with the court, Ohl claims she was subject to ongoing harassment and discriminatory treatment because of her sex and denied training and promotion opportunities.

She said she has repeatedly been subjected to inappropriate behavior, including a male officer pointing an unloaded gun at her head and pulling the trigger; and several instances of lewd language and gestures.

Ohl said Thursday the officer who pointed the gun at her was Sgt. Steve Klemas. She said the harassment began long before the Huisentruit case and has continued since then without any appropriate response to her complaints.

Regarding the religion discrimination, Ohl said in her deposition her church affiliation may have played a part in her being denied promotional opportunities. She said Thursday it also may have been a factor in the harassment she allegedly received.

Ohl is a member of Christian Fellowship Church which earlier this year was awarded nearly $85,000 in a settlement of a suit against the city, Lashbrook and Lt. Logan Wernet.

Thanks, TP, for the summary. There are lawyers who specialize in this sort of thing. Ohl, as I said earlier, really erred in not hiring an attorney to represent her. I wonder if she was not allowed to bring one to the hearing. She will likely sue the city for discrimination. I agree that the officer who put the gun to her head should have been fired immediately.