July 31, 2010 - Here are the 21 reports of police misconduct tracked in our National Police Misconduct News Feed for Friday, July 30, 2010:

• A now-former Choctaw County Oklahoma deputy has been sentenced to a year and a half in prison after convicted of violating the civil rights of three men in two different incidents and then falsifying reports to justify it. The first incident involved him beating a truck driver during a 2005 traffic stop and the other involved him beating two detainees with an ax handle in 2007.
• Thurston County Washington has settled a lawsuit for $150,000 to a mentally ill man who was wrongfully arrested on allegations that he broke into a home and raped an 11-year-old girl. While DNA testing eventually excluded him as a suspect and resulted in the conviction of another person, the improper use of restraints on him while he was incarcerated left him with a deep-vein thrombosis and a pulmonary embolism that resulted in his dependence on blood thinners for the rest of his life.
• The Lansing Community College in Michigan settled a lawsuit for $2,000,000 to a man who was wrongfully convicted for murder after a then Lansing Community College police detective allegedly withheld exculpatory evidence in that case. The man spent 18 months in prison before his conviction was overturned as a result.
• A Palm Beach County Florida deputy is the subject of a lawsuit filed by a man who claims that the deputy startled him while he was sleeping in his car and then shot him in the arm. The deputy was cleared by an internal investigation by claiming that he thought the man was armed and that he shot in self-defense, even though no weapon was found. The incident occurred in June of last year but the man says the sheriff’s department still has his cell phone, wallet, and his car.
• A Delaware County Ohio deputy is accused of confiscating a woman’s cell phone and arresting her for obstruction charges when she attempted to record the deputy questioning her boyfriend. The deputy arrested her, he claims, because he felt that she might be using a fake James Bondesque cell phone gun, which is why he ordered her to put that dangerous weapon back in her pocket before arresting her. Oddly, when the cell phone was finally returned to the woman, the video she tool had been erased.
• Two New York NY police officers working out of the troubled 81st precinct in Brooklyn have been indicted on felony perjury charges after they were caught on video being recorded by fellow officers who were conducting a sting operation targeting yet another cop when they arrested a fellow officer, who was working undercover as part of the sting, on trumped up charges. The article likens what happened as something out of an old Keystones Kops movie.
• A Madison Wisconsin police officer decided to retire prior to a disciplinary hearing where he was to be fired. The officer was accused of several policy violations including excessive force, false reporting, unlawful detention, threatening to arrest a victim or witness without lawful justification, issuing a citation under false pretenses, and falsifying information on a report and during an investigation.
• Six South Bend Indiana police officers are the subject of a lawsuit filed by a man who alleges he was pulled over for speeding while he was sitting at a red light and then detained while his car was damaged during a warrantless search that he did not give his consent for. Most of the incident was captured on dash cam, which was given to the reporters, and the speeding citation against him was later dismissed.
• An external review of the previously scandal-plagued Greece New York police department sustained 38 allegations of misconduct against officers and previous leadership for misconduct ranging from misuse of travel funds to missing drug evidence and the shredding of personnel records after an investigation into the department was announced. The external investigation cost taxpayers $931,715 and may result in charges against some officers in a department where the police chief and two other officers have already been convicted of various charges. The man who led the review says it was one of the most profound cases (of corruption) that he’d seen in his 20 years of doing these investigations.
• A Commerce City Colorado police officer is the subject of a lawsuit filed by a family claiming that the officer shot their dog to death in their yard and in front of their teenage daughter without justification while the officer was responding to a misdialed 911 call. The officer claims that she felt her life was endangered by the barking 35lb mixed breed and shot it in self-defense.
• Six Las Vegas Nevada police officers are the subject of a lawsuit filed by an attorney who claims that he was threatened, ridiculed, roughed up, and then falsely arrested for resisting arrest after the officers stopped him for jogging down a road where he had jogged regularly for years and then demanded to search him, which he rightly refused. Things apparently went downhill from there and included alleged quotes from officers including “I’m Metro, we can do whatever we please.” The charges against the attorney were dismissed quickly, but he claims the incident still damaged his reputation.
• In Philadelphia Pennsylvania a police officer is facing theft charges over that incident that made the news just the day before where three officers went into the back door of a bar while responding to an alarm call and, apparently, at least one of them was caught on surveillance video stealing money from the bar’s safe and stuffing it into his pants. While early articles also claimed that the video showed the officers stealing drinks at the bar as well, the department quickly cleared the other two officers present of any wrongdoing and claims that the officer only stole $825 while the bar owner claimed that over $1,000 was missing.
• A Reading Pennsylvania police officer has been placed on administrative leave while under investigation in relation to a recent raid on a call girl prostitution ring that was run by a person who went by the name “God” who liked to tattoo his ladies with names like “God’s Taken” and “God’s Rebel”. Officials refused to elaborate on exactly why the officer is under investigation, or whether he has a tattoo of his own but did say that “God” had once tried to become a Reading officer himself but was kicked out of the academy after an unspecified incident at a firing range.
• A Geneva Wisconsin police officer who was facing charges for mishandling evidence in a child rape case and other cases took an offer to have the charges dismissed in exchange for his resignation. Prosecutors say they were going to dismiss the charges anyway because it would have been difficult to prove anything beyond just plain ineptitude but the officer chose to resign anyway saying it would have been impossible for him to return anyway.
• Two Prince George’s County Maryland Sheriff’s officers, a lieutenant and a captain, have been charged with felony theft, conspiracy to commit theft, and fraud charges for obtaining unauthorized stipend checks and for using their union credit cards to make personal purchases while serving as president and vice president of the Deputy Sheriff’s Association. The sheriff is trying to excuse it as nothing more than sloppy bookkeeping.
• Actions by Fort Wayne Indiana police officers cost prosecutors two drug cases after a court of appeals ruled that evidence obtained in that case had to be thrown out because the officers elected to perform a high-risk no-knock raid with a battering ram on a suspected drug dealer’s home even though the warrant they requested required them to knock and announce prior to entry.
• A Lorain Ohio police officer has been suspended for 31 days without pay after using a previous contact with a teenager during a call to then apparently attempt to develop a personal relationship with the teen by inundating that person with up to 45 text messages a day and then lying about it to investigators after the person complained. This one is a little weird in that one source is saying the 17-year-old was a boy, another report says the teen was a girl. While the messages appeared to be innocuous and weren’t “sextings” or described as a “grooming” attempt, it is against departmental policy there to use information gained through an on-the-job contact to establish personal relationships like that… not to mention the dishonesty bit.
• The Lafayette Louisiana police department has settled a lawsuit for $23,000 to the former police chief’s former secretary for invading her privacy when the chief planted an illegal listening device in the woman’s office to record her conversations. The police chief pleaded guilty to attempted malfeasance in office in 2008.
• Naperville Illinois and the producers of a “cop-reality” television show called “Female Forces” have settled a suit for an undisclosed sum to two sisters who claim that a film crew showed up with an officer at their home and filmed them without their permission in their pajamas while the officer served one of them a warrant for failure to appear in a traffic case.
• The now-former police chief of Raritan Borough New Jersey has been sentenced to pay a $1,000 fine after resigning and pleading guilty to submitting a false report to the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office regarding whether he and all his officers had passed their service weapons tests. A subsequent investigation revealed that, even though he reported that they had, he and one other officer had not.
• A Fort Myers Florida police officer has been fired after an investigation into allegations that he let an intoxicated driver leave a DUI checkpoint then lied to investigators about it. He claims that he hit the wrong button on a breathalyzer machine but investigators say that was impossible and another officer claims the man tested at .15 BAC.