Posted on 09/12/2007 8:20:27 AM PDT by SubGeniusX
A car-mounted video camera — more commonly used by police than against them — captured a loud and threatening confrontation in this tiny St. Louis County community that left an officer on suspension and the whole world able to listen in.
[snip]
A voice identified as Kuehnlein's can be heard taunting the driver and threatening to jail him on fabricated charges.
The tape, made late last week, was from a camera running in the vehicle Kuehnlein approached, police said.
[snip]
In the video, Kuehnlein, a St. George officer for about two years, approaches a young man who was sitting in a parked car about 2 a.m. in a commuter lot near Spokane and Reavis Barracks roads. Kuehnlein asks for identification. When Darrow asks whether he did anything wrong, the officer orders him out of the car and begins shouting.
"You want to try me? You want to try me tonight? You think you have a bad night? I will ruin your night. … Do you want to try me tonight, young boy?"
Darrow says no.
"Do you want to go to jail for some (expletive) reason I come up with?" the police officer says. Later, Darrow says, "I don't want any problems, officer."
"You're about to get it," Kuehnlein is heard saying. "You already started your (expletive) problems with your attitude."
After the officer notices the camera, he says, "I don't really care about your cameras, 'cause I'm about ready to tow your car, then we can tear 'em all apart."
[snip]
Darrow said he was not trying to entrap the officer. He said he pulled into the commuter lot to meet a friend. When the officer asked him for identification, Darrow said he didn't immediately present it because he believes the officer stopped him without probable cause.
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
Until it happens to YOU. What ever happen to serve and protect.
Setup or not this is no different than undercovers pretending to be hookers. Good for the kid in ridding the city of a bad element. I’m betting the city or state rectifies this problem by banning the use of video cameras trained on LOE’s.
Crossed the line, yes. Fired? Might be a bit draconian. I'd want to see a pattern of this behavior documented for this specific policeman before he's fired over it. Sanctioned? Yes. Written up, or otherwise, documented, but no, not fired. Not over this isolated event.
20 somethings with badges !?
Now we all know why so they are sometimes
called “ Pigs” .
No, I’ve seen my share of bad cops in various localities. it does happen everywhere.
“Same kid, different incident”
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/15/1522.asp
for transcript of the other incident.
Nope. Greater authority = greater resonsibility. If a cop abuses his authority, he ought to end up washing dishes at the local Denny's.
Not me. I know quite a few defense attorneys, police officers, and police officer's ex-spouses. Widely reported from too many states and communities not to be widespread. I can't document that it happened in every little town in Montana, as you point out.
This LEO does not deserve to be on the street. Good thing the “victim” had a camera or this would have never been proven. A Sgt violating every law in the book should be fired. In fact, the good Sgt violated this guys civil rights.
Um, he just said that he would be more than willing to “make up” charges to send someone to jail.
At this point, IMHO, every single arrest this officer has made or will make is now open to question and re-examination. His veracity is now in question - and by extension, his department’s. He needs to be fired.
I may be going out on a limb here, but I think there needs to first be a trial by jury. If he is convicted, then he goes to jail. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
"How do I know that this police officer didn't have it coming?"
That cop lost his mind. But his instincts were correct: that kid was up to something. What kind of person runs around with a video camera set up in his car unless you think you need it.
And, if it had been me, I’d have given the cop my id and answered his questions. The kid did have a right to be there and the cop did have a right to ask him questions. The cop had suspicions that could have led to probable cause after questioning.
The correct answer by the cop should have been to tell kid to, “have a nice night,” and then watched him.
I had an embarrassing similiar situation once. I had taken a new job, moved to a new area, and was driving around randomly on the weekend looking for a house to buy. It was semi-rural and there wasn’t any restaurants or gas stations out there.
I had to urinate. I had a ‘pee-bottle’ in the car and pulled into a deserted parking lot to use it. Just as I was wrapping up I looked up into the mirror and there was a police car behind me and the scenario began a lot like the one did with this kid.
Except, I answered his questions and gave him ID. I didn’t tell him I pulled in to take a leak although he probably would have just nodded his head and moved on. I babbled something about looking for a place to live which made no sense although it was the truth.
He said he approached me because I was ‘hunched-over’ and he wanted to make sure I was ok. I figure he was thinking I was having some kind of solitary sexual interlude out there in that parking lot in the middle of the day. He was right in thinking “something” was going on but I think he came to the wrong conclusion.
To this day I’d like to have told him what I was really doing :D.
Can we say the same about you?
There’s a couple of places that have done that - I think there’s a number of cases on FOIA/First Amendment grounds that are now wending their way through the system because of it.
That said, I’ve had enough problems out there with both civilians and cops that I’m seriously looking into equipping all my vehicles with cameras and mikes. I’m tired of getting told “we can’t do anything about it because there’s no evidence and it’s a he-said-she-said situation.”
This story gets keep getting bigger.
The Cop told his chief that his Cruiser Cam was malfunctioning. When tested it worked. But now the tape is missing.
The current police chief used to work for another city in the area. In 2002 he was disciplined by the state of Missouri for pulling over a 17 year old girl late at night, directing her to follow him to a deserted parking lot where he suggested she perform a sexual act on him.
The prior police chief called the radio station this morning (he did not defend the cop) but said he would not say anything bad about the man who was chief of police in 1981.
The Chief of Police in 1981 was involved with the Syrian mafia in St. Louis and pushed the button on the bomb that had been placed in the car of a rival mob boss. That bombing forced the FBI into St. Louis and after many arrests the local mafia was de-fanged.
The current Mayor of St. George used to be a police officer in another small town in St. Louis County that is also know for abusive police tactics.
Sounds to me like everybody driving through St. George needs to have a video camera.
Look, to everyone here. I know we’re all (all?) in favor of police profiling, as it helps the good guys focus on the real, likely people who are committing the crimes. I’m in favor of it, so that we stop harassing 70 year old ladies at the airport gate and start screening 17 to 39 year old middle easterners.
This really is no different. The cop, who most definitely acted out of hand, was, in my opinion, profiling this kid as a likely miscreant by being alone in a parking lot at 2am. This isn’t a checkpoint, and it wasn’t a routine traffic stop. No stop at 2am is.
Were his civil rights violated? To a degree, yes. What were the damages? In a civil rights case, you have to show damages. Did the policeman break his tail light? Doesn’t seem so. Was the kid unreasonably detained? If 15-30 minute traffic stops are unreasonable in your opinion, I’d beg to differ.
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