Posted on 09/22/2007 8:03:54 AM PDT by beltfed308
ST. GEORGE — A police officer who was recorded berating a motorist earlier this month has lost his job.
The board of aldermen voted 5-0, with one member absent, to fire Sgt. James Kuehnlein on Monday. The vote was cast in a session closed to the public and wasn't announced until Wednesday, when a notice was posted at the City Hall of this tiny south St. Louis County community.
In a video that got wide viewership on the Internet, Kuehnlein taunts and threatens motorist Brett Darrow, 20, sometimes shouting and using profanity, after questioning him in a commuter lot near Interstate 55. Darrow posted the footage of the Sept. 7 incident on the web.
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
Just to clarify, I was in one for the first 6 houses on Mullally Dr, where I could look down and see the lot.
That cop was just full of it.
He forgot that we hire police to keep us safe, not to have masters that will intimidate us.
Wow! Your story just dovetails from Brett’s.
I’d personally request the D.A. to file charges against the officer if I was you.
I don’t know you, but I’m assuming your a pretty decent size guy, but you teach a lot of people and many of them are probably smaller women. Can you imagine if he did that to one of them, maybe even pushing hard enough to break some teeth on the concrete wall.
Take some action to keep this from happening again. The letter from Internal Affairs was laughable. The officer will receive a reprimand that will be inserted into his file. Yeah, that’s really going to hurt him (Brett’s cop had done worse and it was expunged). At a minimum he should also receive some serious time off without pay or be fired. This would definitely keep other holders from being harrassed in the future.
“I find it hard to believe that the crime rate is that high in that area”
That is something else I wanted to say as well. This is in quiet South St. Louis County. This is not in a high crime rate area at all. I have no doubt the talk about the thefts in that area was just another lie like all the others that came out of Sgt. James Kuehnlein’s mouth.
Kudos, Brett. Despite some of the hand wringers here, you did good work.
In the early ‘90s, I drove a Suzuki Samurai. The Samurai was once known as a “poor man’s Jeep” or more vulgarly, a “n*****s Jeep”. It was a cop magnet. I got stopped in that vehicle at least once a month. Sometimes my “music was too loud” or my “tail light was too dim” and once because I was in a well-to-do neighborhood trying to find an alternative route around a closed bridge. I even had one cop pull me over and literally SCREAM at me because I was doing 61 in a 55... yet he issued no ticket. I wish that the technology existed back then... I would have surely employed a camera to catch some of these evening cowboys behaving badly.
Keep up the good work.
APf
Also, I wanted to post about the officer’s patrol car video.
When I first went to see the chief and file a formal complaint on Tuesday the 11th, the chief said he didn’t think the system was turned on for my stop. He told me the units installed were the ‘Prosecutor 2000’. He told me they turn on by the officer pressing the button on his body mic, a button in the car, or when any or the rotating lights come on (when the slide bar is pushed on the Code 3 control box). I told him it would have recorded then since you can see the lights come on when he comes up behind me. He tried telling me it might have only been the tape down lights (big bright white lights on lightbar that DON’T flash). I told him that those were on, but you can clearly see in my mirror, the overhead flashing lights were on.
He finally told me their was no tape. He didn’t know what happened to it and said the officer probably got rid of it. They have 7 tapes (one for each day) and they just rotate them unless one is needed for court or a complaint.
The next day I met with him again. He had all of a sudden come up with a tape that was supposedly the “missing” tape, but it had no footage from anything that happened that night. It had stuff on there from weeks ago. It was clear they just stuck a tape in it’s spot. This conveniently happened after the officer got an attorney. I’m sure he told them that if an officer destroys evidence, it’s a federal felony.
The chief has even publicly gone back and forth about if there is a tape from THAT night, or if it just didn’t record.
They know if that tape came out though, the officer would be in jail. He had me pinned up against my car and while yelling at me, spit was flying all over my face.
I think it’s funny when people say I baited the officer. He was the one baiting me to push/hit him so he could beat me up. He was the one looking to start something that night.
That is something I have been getting a lot of emails about. People with similar stories that had no chance in getting anything done about it since it was their word vs. the cops.
Excellent work Brett. I find it funny that the same people who have smeared your name here for videotaping this cop, most likely think that NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” show is the best thing since sliced bread. Be very, very careful now, as I’m sure you’re now Target #1 where you live. Keep up the good work and sue their a$$es off and use the money to go to law school. Have you called the field office for the FBI yet??? There’s one in St. Louis isn’t there??? Ask them about “Color of Law” violations.
Interesting. Scary situation. He was looking for a fight methinks.
Would love to see their tapes, but we all know that will never happen.
good job.
Because he never gave one?
"So the only problem you have with this is that the cop got caught?"
Who said I have a problem? The cop got caught. He needs to be punished.
If he stays in St. Louis and continues what he's doing?
Well, according to most of the posters on this board, he'll receive a "Citizen of the Year" award from the St. Louis Police Department for his assistance in weeding out the unfit among them. The cops will personaly present him with the "Keys to the City" and have a parade in his honor for being the one responible for their fellow police officers being disgraced and fired.
Yup.
I'm not surprised. Add it to his list of screw-ups.
"... and if more evidence presents itself of a long term pattern of abuse order color of authority ..."
I nominate this 20-year-old kid as the one to uncover it. He knows the law, the U.S. Constitution, he's already got the police scanner and the car cameras hooked up to a secure recorder, and, obviously, the time to drive around aimlessly at 2am on the lookout for these rogue cops.
I bet he'll even get a special reward from the St. Louis Police Department for his efforts.
I disagree. Had the cop been fired on a he said/she said basis and nothing else, you would be correct. This officer acted like a complete a$$h@le, and it was obvious to everyone with 20/200 vision or better.
A good officer will not let himself get baited, will not engage in debates in the street, and will get his job done effectively in a professional manner.
This case should have no negative impact on any good officers, and may give pause to the bad ones, though I doubt that.
Bingo. That should have been the lead paragraph in the article.
So if I put a hidden camera on every St. Louis cop for 30 days, there wouldn't be anything on it that could get them disciplined or fired. According to you.
Gosh, it must be pleasant living in your childish fantasy world.
Coming from one as childish and naive as you, I’ll just ignore that.
My sentiments exactly.
In a sense. It was a reverse sting.
But it was driven by a personal desire (Revenge? YouTube exposure? Ego trip? Anti-authority expression?) rather than a public service.
It would be similar to a cop targeting an individual, personally, for some legal infraction (ie., waiting outside a bar then ticketing him for DUI). Yes, we can all agree that the guy was wrong for drinking and driving and that he deserved the ticket, but ....
Was the kid charged? I didn't realize that.
To answer your question, no, it's definitely not okay for LEOs to charge people with offenses that they did not commit -- for any reason.
An excuse? Not at all.
What this kid did is not much different than a cop staking out a bar and pulling over drivers who have just left (with a valid reason, of course) and doing a Breathalyzer.
They deserve their DUI, yes?
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