Posted on 08/30/2018 8:58:09 PM PDT by BackRoads775
UPDATED at 4 p.m. with statement from police union official.
ST. LOUIS • St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner will no longer accept criminal cases from 28 city police officers and is reviewing any open cases they handled for “viability.”
Gardner delivered the list of officers to the police department Tuesday, calling it an “exclusion list,” according to documents obtained by the Post-Dispatch.
A written statement from Gardner said, in part, that prosecutors have “the responsibility to defend the integrity of the criminal justice system. Police officers play an important role in the criminal justice system, and the credibility of officers is one of the most important attributes of the job.”
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
I DID NOT touch on race.
Vermont Lt interjected that out of thin air.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3683666/posts?page=21#21
Gardner’s predecessor, Jennifer Joyce, refused to take cases from a handful of officers at a time in the past when their credibility had been questioned.
Chris Hinckley, chief warrant officer for the circuit attorney’s office, recently emailed a letter to the Missouri Highway Patrol saying the office had dismissed some cases and refused to file charges in others after Trooper Michael L. Crutcher’s conduct during traffic stops caught the attention of city prosecutors.
“The trooper’s conduct came under scrutiny after several prosecuting attorneys expressed legal and ethical concerns about his conduct during their case assessment and review of dash-cam footage,” Hinckley said in his email to Highway Patrol Maj. Greg Smith. “The review of the officer revealed a pattern of unacceptable practices and questionable behavior.”
“Our review showed repeated instances of undue pressure, factual exaggerations or misstatements of the law, seemingly all aimed at securing admissions or consents-to-search,” Hinckley told Bush.
Issues cited in a list of dismissed or refused cases provided by the circuit attorney’s office include a “lack of evidence,” “lab results negative” or “search and seizure problems.”
So listen up and maybe you'll get something into your stupid skull. I can give you chapter and verse on all of this:
These days, a traffic stop along the interstate, which is where any state's State Police do most of their traffic stops, isn't a traffic stop, it's a drug interdiction. Job One at that traffic stop is to get the motorist talking. Get him to incriminate himself. Trip him up. Get him to "consent" to a search.
And if that means lies of omission and lies of commission and threats, then that's what it means. That means you tell the motorist that if he doesn't consent to a search, he's going have to wait an hour for the drug dog to come and sniff what we both know is in there. Or that he smells marijuana, and either you tell me where it is, or I arrest you right here and right now, and we tow the car and find it anyway. Or you tell him that based on your "years of training and experience", he and his car and his license plate and his bumper stickers and his junk in his back seat match the always-convenient profile of a drug runner, and that's all he needs to search the car. Or you tell him that he's in a "high crime area", and that's good enough for search too. Or a dozen more lies that I could list from case after case. It's all illegal, but it happens.
There's no doubt that that's the kind of stuff this guy was doing, because that's what "undue pressure, factual exaggerations or misstatements of the law aimed at securing admissions or consents-to-search" means. And he was doing it so aggressively and so blatantly and to so many motorists that nobody in the prosecutor's office could stomach it.
The murder rate in St. Louis is nearly THIRTY times higher than NYC?
Sounds more like East St. Louis, Illinois. They must have crossed the Mississippi.
“The overall crime rate in Old North Saint Louis is 280% higher than the national average. For every 100,000 people, there are 29.5 daily crimes that occur in Old North Saint Louis. Old North Saint Louis is safer than 0% of the cities in the Missouri. In Old North Saint Louis you have a 1 in 10 chance of becoming a victim of any crime””
I used to have a similar bumper sticker: “If you can read this, our snipers can drop you.”
...would be anti-Constitutional.
False
I DID NOT touch on race.
I stand corrected.
+1
You are dead wrong.
Not even nearly. Zero Constitutional issues here. It is the system working.
Police officers like everyone else have a Constutional right to opt not to testify if they so choose, without bias.
For a public official to assign bias and penalize an officer or their department flies in the face of this.
It is a violation of the U. S. Constitution whether you like it or not.
Where you went wrong on this, was to assume I had not considered other factors. In my original comments on this topic, I stated she better have something more than a Fifth Amendment issue with the officers, to justify her announcement she wouldn’t take case referrals involving them.
If she had a clear indication of wrongdoing, she would be exercising her denial based on that not the sole exercising of a Fifth Amendment right.
That would not be a Fifth Amendment violation.
A denial based solely on the use of the Fifth Amendment by an officer absent any proof of something beyond that would be a breach of the officer’s Constitutional rights. Merely suspecting something else would not be enough.
She’s obviously NOT a black woman.
...would be a breach of the officer’s Constitutional rights.
False. Again.
There is no Constitutional right to have prosecutors take your case or your testimony.
A prosecutor has to have a reason for doing this type of thing. She can’t just out the blue say, “I won’t take any more cases from this police department.”, without cause.
The article touched on the issue of officers taking the Fifth, and that was mentioned as one of the possible reasons for her action.
I stated that she better have a better excuse than that.
That’s the case. She cannot deny officers to bring cases to her for using their Fifth Amendment right unless she has something else to back it up.
Yes, I know your post is false again. Thanks for labeling it for me.
Read about the Brady lists all over the country.
This is has been happening for a long time, it has been challenged, and it still exists.
ZERO Constitutional issues.
So what you are saying is that on a whim, any D.A. can simply cut a department off, and accept no new referals from them?
There must be a reason for it. It has to be a valid reason for it.
What happens if you get a person who thinks Blacks are very mistreated, so tells a police department they will no longer accept any cases against Black criminals.
Are you saying they are on solid ground doing that?
Let me ask you this. Abortion was ruled legal by the SCOTUS.
Do you accept that also? Should we never try to get it addressed again?
I think they were wrong.
I also think it is wrong to refuse to take cases from a police officer if he has done nothing more than use his Constitution right to the Fifth Amendment.
Judges tell jurors not to assess any weight to a man who pleads the Fifth.
Now for the same thing, it’s supposed to be okay for the D.A. to assess weight to this, and nothing else?
Perhaps you’ll come back and tell me that is right.
If you do, I’m still going to say that I do not agree.
I don’t agree with the courts regarding abortion either.
Does it truly sound reasoned to you to refuse to take referrals from an office who has done nothing more than plead the Fifth?
Why?
Equates abortion with a cop's hurt feelings.
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
I'll end this here: There will NEVER be a successful court challenge to this process.
NEVER. EVER.
You poor thing.
You’re just melting down over this.
Are you going to be okay? Want me to call someone for you?
I really do feel your pain.
BTW, I didn’t compare them. I merely said I didn’t agree with the ruling on abortion either.
Just one more aspect of this discussion you weren’t capable of grasping.
And as for officer’s hurt feelings...
What a dufus.
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