- An SAPD officer took a plea deal for stealing pot, money, guns from drug dealer while on duty.
- A Houston PD officer pled guilty to assisting thieves with an armored car robbery in 2013.
- Another Houston PD officer stands accused of working for the Los Zetas drug cartel.
- A Victoria Sheriff's deputy pled guilty to official oppression after using excessive force against a motorist. Charges of record tampering and perjury were dismissed, though he'd admitted to the former.
- A new lawsuit accuses Caldwell County Sheriff's deputies of excessive force in an event caught on video.
- A former Wise County Sheriff's deputy who was the department's liaison to sex offender was convicted and sent to federal prison or 16 months after subjecting them to nude photographs.
- An Austin cop was suspended for 90 days for unwarranted use of his Taser against a homeless man. The event was caught on video.
- A former Cameron County Sheriff's deputy was sentenced to a year in federal prison for transporting immigrants into the country illegally.
- A Bexar County detention officer is facing termination and criminal charges over allegations that he sexually assaulted a female inmate.
Monday, January 18, 2016
TX law enforcement misconduct roundup
In an effort to clear Grits' browser tabs, here are links a number of police accountability episodes reported around the state recently which merit readers' attention:
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4 comments:
quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Grits for Breakfast is watching the watchers!
Who will guard the guards?
"lpem custodiens pullum cavea" does not work.
The fox guarding its own chicken coop has proven to be risky and unfair, if not down right unconstitutional.
When you assign somebody a duty, placing them into a position of power where they then can exploit the situation for their own sadistic, political, or financial benefit, then you let the fox guard the henhouse. What is more: not only can that group exploit the situation, they most certainly will – just like the fox who can’t help being a predator of the chickens trapped in the coop.
We need outside accountability. And no, we cannot use contractors to watch over other contractors or state-appointed internal watchdogs, as this can also be equally useless, unless we also appoint a citizens group which includes ex-prisoners and inmates families, law students, and civil rights activists.
Citizens need transparency and need to serve as watchdogs. There needs to be a multy-layered approach with zero tolerance for abuses.
So: who will watch the guards? Socrates and Plato posited the question over 2,000 years ago. They proposed that citizens serve as watchdogs. It never happened.
We still don't have any real solutions in Texas. Are we that far behind? Yes, we are. I's not only ignorance, it's deliberate indifference and greed accompanied by political ambitions.
We the people have become seemingly powerless over greed, exploitation and political forces run by evil doers who don't give a darn about human suffering, as long as it is somebody else's.
From policemen to prosecutors, to judges, to our governor, trickling back down to local and state jails and, ultimately seeping into wardens and guards at TDCJ: they have all become masters at denying, covering up, lying, cheating, justifying, inflicting un-necessary and undescribable pain on the weakest of all trapped in they chicken coops made of steel and concrete.
The evil-doings of a few has, and will have, multi-generational effects and widespread ramifications on many. It will not stop, unless they are made to stop.
The silence and collusion of the governor, the police, the guards, the employees and all others involved, and also the public, is deafening. We should all be rising in protest, but we don't. Texas voted for the Bushes and the Abbotts. Their ignorance is famous worldwide and they have become synonymous with bigotry, hate and greed. Nothing to be Texas proud.
Art Acevedo's war on Black officers continues.
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