Eight Terrible Police Scandals
The police force strives to uphold justice and hold down crime. But be it the beckoning finger of extra cash or a violent vigilante mindset, police officers routinely have to work with things that have turned many good cops into quite decidedly bad cops. Some countries like Russia and Puerto Rico suffer from inexcusable police corruption: scandals are rife throughout their police departments.
The police scandals below reveal an ugly side of justice – the secret double lives of police officers; the extortion, drug dealings, abuse, and murders. However, the fact that these scandals have come to light is indicative that other police officers are still carrying out exemplary investigative work.
Ipperwash Crisis: Ontario, Canada
On September 4, 1995, First Nation tribe members from the Stoney Point Ojibway band protested on Ipperwach Provincial Park to reclaim their land. History was on their side: the Canadian government had seized Native land in 1942 to establish a WWII military training camp; this land had then became Ipperwash Provincial Park; and First Indians had been trying to reclaim it ever since.
With the Ontario Provincial Police cautiously looking on, 35 Stoney Point protestors occupied the park for a peaceful demonstration. But tension escalated between police and protestors when a tribe member smashed the window of a police car. Eight protestors moved to a nearby parking lot wielding baseball bats and sticks, and within the next two days riot squads and SWAT teams had moved in.
When a protestor approached the police, he was arrested and beaten. Fellow protestors rushed in to rescue their fallen friend, sparking a riot. The police opened fire, including officer Kenneth Deane, who wounded protestor Dudley George. Police delayed George's family from taking him to the hospital, and he soon died from gunshot wounds on September 7, 1995. George became the only First Indian killed during a 20 th century land claims protest.
Deane – who claims that he mistook George to be carrying a rifle – was convicted of criminal negligence and sentenced to two years of community service. Unsatisfied, Dudley George's family fought for a public inquiry for eight years until the government finally launched the Ipperwash Inquiry on November 12, 2003. The report revealed crass police misconduct, particularly racist profanities uttered by former-Premier Mike Harris and former-police Sergeant Stan Korosec. The Canadian government signed over the park to the Stoney Point First Nation on May 28, 2009.
Charles Becker: Manhattan, N.Y.
Charles Becker was both a successful NYPD officer and a powerful criminal. His work against police corruption landed him a position as the head of an anti-vice squad in 1911, which he unscrupulously exploited to further his own corrupt practices.
Becker used his power to demand payments from Manhattan brothels and casinos in exchange for police immunity and protection. He recruited thugs to execute his dirty work. With the threat of a police raid, he managed to extort $100,000 from several illegal businesses. However, Becker's illegal reign came to a dramatic end after a heated argument with his close gambling partner, Herman Rosenthal.
Furious, Becker ordered a raid to close down Rosenthal's operations. Rosenthal wreaked vengeance by exposing Becker's illegal double life to fearless district attorney Charles S. Whitman, who boldly denounced Becker. After Becker ordered his thugs to kill Rosenthal, Whitman arrested Becker on June 29, 1912. Two trials convicting him of murder sent him to the electric chair, and on July 30, 1915 he became the first police officer in U.S. history to receive the death penalty for murder.
But the case is not quite closed, according to some historians. Although his corrupt dealings are indisputable, some question his role in Rosenthal's murder. Others even accuse Whitman, who became governor in November 1914, of manipulating evidence to further his own political aspirations.
Russia "Human Shield" Scandal: Moscow, Russia
In March 2009, Moscow police officers ordered Sergei Sutyagin and two other drivers to align their cars as a barricade to block a criminal fleeing in a speeding Audi. The driver rammed through the three cars with their passengers still inside and sped from the scene. Despite their serious injuries, the officers refused to compensate the three drivers, arousing national outrage.
The “Human Shield” scandal tailgates another traffic scandal in which police covered up a car accident that killed two people. These scandals join the countless others that weigh down the Moscow police. Several cases of misconduct, incompetence, and corruption within the Moscow police force have sparked widespread disdain, mistrust, and fear. In April 2009, a police chief went on a rampage in a supermarket, killing two and wounding seven.
The Russians themselves criticize their police department's unbelievable incompetence, citing the daytime murders of journalists Anastasia Baburova and Anna Politkovskaya. A February 2009 poll revealed that Russians either fear or mistrust police, while newspapers regularly castigate the police force.
Cleaning up the Moscow police remains a nagging issue for the Russian government, especially President Dmitri A. Medvedev. Medvedev hopes to improve the quality of law enforcement by decreasing police employment and increasing wage and benefits. He maintains a hopeful outlook: “People want members of the police who are morally impeccable to defend them, even more so in a legal sense. They want to trust them. I am confident that we can create such a structure.”
Murder of Neda Agha-Soltan: Tehran, Iran
The disputed 2009 Iranian presidential election between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and wildly popular candidate Mir Hossein Musavi ignited deadly turmoil between pro-reform protestors and the “peace-keeping” police. After the election, the new President urged law enforcers to maintain peace among the rioters who were still supporting Musavi as the true winner. But the police only increased the violence, detaining more than 5,000 protestors, and abusing and even killing prisoners.
The police suppressed the protestors using batons, pepper spray, tear gas, and firearms, and causing an estimated 72 deaths in 2009. Caught in the crossfire was Neda Agha-Soltan. Heading to an election protest on June 20, 2009, she was shot by an unknown Basij militiaman in Tehran.
After her death, the government denied Soltan a proper burial, and police and militiamen refused to allow them to hold any mourning or memorial service. Her family and 70 other mourners attempted to hold a service outside the Niloufar mosque, but just 10 minutes in, 20 militiamen stormed them and broke up the mourners.
Some of Soltan's supporters have fled Iran in fear of government repression, but many continue to protest of the election while police continue to suppress and abuse them. Soltan's death has cast her as the icon of their protests. Several videos of her death have captured media outrage, and inspire protests to this day.
Puerto Rico Police Corruption: Puerto Rico
Puerto Rican Agent Alejo Maldonado led a double life: Head of the Criminal Investigations Corps at the police academy, and a deadly gang leader leading 25 other officers. Maldonado terrorized Puerto Rico in the 1970s as he brazenly committed arson, extortion, kidnappings, robberies, and murders-for-hire – all with the law ostensibly on his side.
His final heist was ransoming Mario Consuegra, son of a wealthy jeweler, for $300,000 in 1983 before being sentenced to 40 years in prison on charges of extortion and conspiracy. Despite his arrest, Maldonado predicted that police corruption in Puerto Rico would not end: “Police corruption is eternal. It was not something we made up, it was there and it still exists. Our evil was not ours alone, it was everybody around us.”
Indeed, corruption still runs rampant within the Puerto Rico Police Department. Officers, judges, and prosecutors are accused especially of aiding drug deals by protecting drug dealers, returning confiscated drugs, and planting and removing evidence, among other accusations. In 2001 and 2002 more than 60 officers were arrested on drug-related charges. Puerto Ricans have lost faith in their justice system as countless accusations and arrests continue to sully the police department.
Abner Louima Scandal: New York City, N.Y.
Once called the most depraved act ever committed by a police officer, NYPD officer Justin A. Volpe sodomized Haitian immigrant Abner Louima with a broom handle on August 9, 1997. Volpe had arrested Louima after a scuffle at a nightclub, mistaking Louima to have hit him. A second officer escorted Louima to a bathroom in a Brooklyn police station, where Volpe brutalized Louima with a broken broom handle while yelling racial slurs. Volpe later brandished the sullied broom and bragged to other officers.
While Louima lay in the hospital for two months, officers attempted to cover up the incident, claiming that Louima's wounds were caused by homosexual relations. However, Volpe was charged with aggravated sexual abuse and first-degree assault on August 13, 1997. The trials continued for five years, and fellow officers broke the “blue wall of silence” – the unspoken agreement that officers would not report other officers' misconducts – to testify against the charged officers.
Volpe pled guilty while accusations flew between NYPD officers Charles Schwarz, Thomas Wiese, Thomas Bruder regarding the second officer that participated in the crime. Though the identity of Volpe's fellow attacker was never solved, the court sentenced Volpe to 30 years in prison in 1999. Schwarz, Bruder, and Wiese received sentences in 2000 that were later overturned, and Louima was awarded over $8 million in settlement costs.
In 2008, the NYPD faced yet another sodomy charge in a case involving Officer Richard Kern and victim Michael Mineo. Though all charged officers were not found guilty, the case sent disturbing echoes of Abner Louima around the NYPD.
Rampart Scandal: Los Angeles, Calif.
The Rampart Scandal is known as one of the most widespread cases of police corruption in U.S. history, with around 70 officers implicated in “the worst corruption scandal in LAPD history.”
Former Police Chief Daryl F. Gates had created the Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) unit in the late 1970s to fight growing gang activity in the Rampart police division of the city. CRASH officers took extreme measures to suppress gang activity. Brutality defined CRASH culture. However, this vigilantism eventually went too far, with several incidents in the late 90s revealing the corruption within the Rampart police division.
A road rage shootout on March 18, 1997 was the first incident in a chain of events that led to the downfall of LAPD. CRASH officer Kevin Gaines drove up to LAPD officer Frank Lyga, threatening Lyga with a gun in one hand and gang signs in the other. Lyga shot Gaines in self-defense. Investigation revealed that Gaines was one of many officers hired by “Death Row Records” – a rap recording company related to the Bloods gang. The company lucratively paid off-duty officers like Gaines as security guards.
Other incidents – an armed bank robbery, a brutal beating, and cocaine theft – shed further light on the darker side of the CRASH officers. Concerned, former Chief Bernard Parks launched the Rampart Corruption Task Force to investigate officers, which led to the arrest of CRASH officer Rafael Perez on August 25, 1998. Perez agreed to provide investigators with information in exchange for a lighter prison sentence. His 4,000-page testimony implicated about 70 officers in countless incidents of misconduct: framing, false testimonies, stealing $800,000-worth of cocaine, and beatings. And although Perez never addressed it, the CRASH unit may also have ties to the murder of rapper Notorious B.I.G.
In the end, the LAPD faced 140 civil suits and $125 million in settlement costs. Although Parks disbanded CRASH in 2000, there are still many references to the Rampart Scandal in pop culture.
(Photo of former-Chief Bernard Parks, with Rafael Perez in the top right corner.)
Caso Degollados Scandal (Case of the Slit Throats): Santiago, Chile
On March 30, 1985, three communist party members – Manuel Guerrero Ceballos, Santiago Nattino Allende, and Jose Manuel Parada Maluenda – were found with their throats slashed near Santiago, Chile. The three men had been kidnapped just two days before their deaths.
The grisly murder, which most believe to be politically motivated, induced the Supreme Court to appoint Jose Canovas Robles as the Special Investigating Judge. In August, Canovas arrested and indicted several members of the national police force, the Carabineros: Colonel Julio Luis Michea, Colonel Luis Fontaine, Major Guillermo Gonzalez Betancourt, Captain Hector Diaz Anderson, Captain Patricio Zamora, and two non - commissioned officers .
This provoked institutional turmoil within police forces: the resignation of Director General of the Carabineros Cesar Mendoza, the appointment of new Director General Rodolfo Stange, the dissolution of Carabineros agency DICOMCAR, and several other changes. For over 18 months, no one was convicted due to judges constantly transferring the case on to others. But six policemen were eventually sentenced to life in prison.
Photos courtesy of Amnesty International, ABC News, Primera Hora, News One, Salon, and La Nación.
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