This is one of the more crass examples of law-enforcement fraud I've run across recently.
Reported the Austin Statesman:
The former police chief of Jarrell pleaded guilty Friday to federal fraud charges, admitting he accepted bribes from undocumented workers to help them obtain temporary immigration status.
Appearing
before a U.S. magistrate judge in Austin, Andres Tomas Gutierrez
answered a series of mostly yes-or-no questions during the 40-minute
hearing. The former small-town police chief admitted to a single charge
of wire fraud/theft of honest services stemming from a federal
investigation that alleged he took payments from several people to give
them immigration benefits for helping with bogus police investigations. ...
As for the undocumented workers caught in the scam, [US Attorney Robert] Pitman said those
victims “at no point presented a public safety threat,” and they will
remain in the country for the time being. They now legitimately qualify
for the temporary immigration status available to people cooperating
with a criminal investigation, he said.
An
earlier story gave more detail about the scheme:
Court records say Gutierrez collected the payments from the fall of
2011 to November 2013. Two other people, who weren’t named in the court
documents and didn’t work for the city of Jarrell, introduced Gutierrez
to undocumented workers who had money to pay for immigration benefits,
the documents said.
Gutierrez and the two people working with him
told the illegal immigrants they would be working as informants for the
Jarrell Police Department, the documents said. As they asked for the
payment, they “lied to the (undocumented residents), telling them that
the Jarrell Police Department would receive the money and use it to pay
expenses related to official business,” the documents said. In fact,
authorities said, Gutierrez and his accomplices kept “the money for
their own personal use,” the documents said.
Then Gutierrez
emailed applications to U.S. government officials in Austin, seeking a
special type of immigration status for those individuals by claiming
they were helping the Jarrell Police Department with narcotics and human
trafficking investigations, authorities said. The “Significant Public
Benefit Parole” — available to foreigners who assist local, state and
federal law enforcement agencies — allows them to remain in the United
States for one year. It can be renewed by a law enforcement agency.
RELATED POLICE MISCONDUCT NEWS: Last month, an East Texas police chief was sentenced to five years in prison for
running a license plate check on behalf of a suspected meth dealer.
ALSO:
Reported the Austin Statesman, "A former Austin police officer has pleaded guilty to giving false
information to federal authorities during a credit card fraud
investigation, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office."
AND: A now-former Tarrant County Sheriff's Deputy was
sentenced to 30 years in prison for impregnating a 16-year old relative.
AND:
Reported AP, "Federal prosecutors say a former sheriff's deputy in West Texas has been
sentenced to four years in prison for distributing cocaine."
and yet we are supposed to feel safe and protected by the law enforcement community? one bad apple does ruin a bucket.
ReplyDeleteTaken at a glance in local news, the police misconduct wouldn't seem to amount to very much. But when taken as a part of the big national picture, then compared with statistics on the general public, one can clearly see that sexual misconduct is at epidemic proportions. Here's a look at the national documented cases of child sex crimes which involved police officers: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Tribute-to-survivors-of-child-sexual-assault-by-law-enforcement-officers/180584842010594
ReplyDeleteAfter harvesting data and documenting cases for several years, I can state for a fact that most of these problems can be directly attributed to the passing of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 which has tripled the number of police officers since its enactment and is also to blame for the lowering of standards used prior to its passage. Whereas before 1994 we had extensive psych testing which was used to weed-out undesirables. But since 1995, most all of the larger departments have had to alter their tests because so many were failing and registering as psychopaths.
President Obama's Justice Department is aggressively investigating several big urban police departments for systematic civil rights abuses such as harassment of racial minorities, false arrests, and excessive use of force.
ReplyDeleteWith the stroke of a presidential pen, Barack Obama could halt these abuses.
I'm SOOOOO shocked
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