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Posted on 06/17/2010 12:57:53 PM PDT by inflorida
FLAGLER COUNTY, Fla. -- Two Bunnell police officers, a husband and wife, are facing charges and a city commissioner is under investigation after an illegal towing operation was exposed.
Investigators say, when the two officers, Lt. John Murray, who is second in command, and his wife Lisa, would pull over a driver and, for example, arrest them after finding drugs inside the vehicle, even if the vehicle was legally and safely parked, they would have the vehicle towed anyway. The alleged scheme in the case is that the towing company is owned by a Bunnell city commissioner.
The second in command at the Bunnell Police Department found himself in jail, along with his police officer wife. Lt. Murray and his wife Lisa were allegedly towing vehicles illegally after traffic stops and funneling the business to City Commissioner James Flynt.
WFTV spoke with Bunnell's police chief by phone.
"It came to me as a shock. It was a shock, to say the least," said Bunnell Police Chief Arthur Jones.
In one case, Bunnell police officer Lisa Murray is accused of handcuffing a man who refused to pay the $180 towing bill.
In addition, John Murray is accused of stealing evidence. The State Attorney's Office believes that, while Murray was the city's evidence custodian, he stole money from evidence envelopes by replacing real confiscated cash with counterfeit money.
(Excerpt) Read more at wftv.com ...
Cops make the best crooks...
Why has the commissioner also not been arrested?
Damn, I guess the donuts in Florida aren’t all that tasty. These three are showing an extraordinary amount of entrepreneurship for government employees.
What a dumbass, if the bad cops had just stolen money & drugs from the evidence locker they would still be in business.
I’m sure this is just an isolated incident...
How do you pull someone over and they are legally parked? Doesn’t make sense to this cop, but ok. Lock ‘em up if they broke the law.
Got a similar scam running in Dallas County, TX. Two constables set up an agreement with one towing company without bids, evidence of kickbacks. When the DA, who is a Democrat, as are the Constables, was told about it, he stonewalled an investigation.
At least in Flagler County, the authorities took action.
“Cops make the best crooks...”
I understand why you’d say this, but from where I sit, there are many politicians who could give cops a good run for their money. And the amounts involved—e.g., $90K in Rep. Jefferson’s freezer—aren’t exactly chump change. Although, if you’ll recall, the formerly powerful chair of Ways and Means, Dan Rostenkowski (”sixth most significant politician to come from Chicago in the twentieth century”), got taken down for some pretty petty antics such as converting his officially purchased stamps for cash at the House post office.
I would hate to be stopped by that female cop...she looks meaner’nhell.
Boston cops had perfectly legally parked cars towed without writing a citation or any paperwork. Basically, they were snatching high value luxury cars like Mercedes and BMWs. The tow operators paid the cops and then sold the vehicles to chopshops.
It all looked legal because the cops would be supervising the towing, no one thought to call the cops. If the owner showed up during the operation, they gin up some phony citation and he’d be out the ticket and the tow costs. Really sucks.
I thought it came out in Katrina that there were paychecks going out to non-police officers to inflate the numbers so that citizens (read crooks) didn’t know about dwindling police force numbers (money was being paid out all the same if I recall).
What county was it that all the cars were towed going to see Glenn Beck?
“I thought it came out in Katrina that there were paychecks going out to non-police officers to inflate the numbers so that citizens (read crooks) didn’t know about dwindling police force numbers “
You could be right, but I didn’t understand what you meant by
“citizens (read crooks).” How are citizens the crooks in this scenario? Seems like the pols who arranged this petty thievery and non-police officers who took the money are the crooks. The citizens are merely the patsies who have to pony up for these shenanigans.
I don’t mean that all of the civilians were crooks, I’m trying to recall city officials’ excuse (basically that they didn’t tell the public because then the crooks would also know).
Say I roll through a stop sign in a residential area. A cop lights me up and I pull over next to the curb in front of a house (where anybody can park at any time). After checking me out, he realizes that I have a warrant and takes me in. The car is legally parked...no reason to tow.
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