“A doctor testifying for the defense in the NYPD sodomy trial told jurors on Wednesday that the alleged victim’s injuries couldn’t have come from a police baton.
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‘Do I have an opinion on it? I don’t believe it happened.’”
Both these quotes are from this Daily News article on Mineo.
The New York Times reportsthat, “Intense pressure to produce annual crime reductions led some supervisors and precinct commanders to manipulate crime statistics.”
I’m shocked. Shocked.
Reclassifying a $1,100 theft as a $950 theft isn’t the end of the world. But a police culture where it’s OK to play a bit fast and loose with the numbers is in nobody’s best interests.
Plus, if you play with the numbers this year, you have to play with the numbers next year just to keep even.
Does this mean the crime drop is a lie? No. Of course not.
But it does mean that hard-working and well intentioned officers are under too much pressure to produce better and better “stats.”
I think Michael Mineo is a liar. I’ve said it before here and here and I’ll say it again. The latest is this, “[A police baton] could not have possibly made the hole in this underwear,” said [a defense witness], “This is a square hole.”
Seems like pretty damning evidence. At the end of an expandable baton is a round little metal ball (which hurts like hell if you get hit by it). It can’t punch out a square hole. (I’d accept a rip, by the way.)
I suppose your opinion comes down to this: which do you think is more likely? That a cop would stick his own baton up a guy’s ass or that a two-bit idiot would make up a story to win big in a lawsuit against the police. To me, it’s no contest.
Seemed to me it was a good day in court for these officers. It’ll feel better when the officers get off.
Illustrating once again that crime and the economy are not inherently linked. The storyin the New York Times.
Here’s to Sgt Kelly and his good Times Square shooting!
The man was carrying a card that said: “I feel sorry for a cop if he think I’m getting into his paddy wagon.”
Seems like everybody in the NYPD is doing it.
And so what? The whole concept is strange to this former Baltimore police officer. So is the language.
I had three real badges when I was cop. They give you one, for your shirt or jacket. You need to pay for others. One other you need, for the wallet. I also got one more, one suitable for framing, a so-called plaque badge. The wallet badge is also a plaque badge (flat) with the pins cut and filed off. When I quit, I turned one of them in. You do the math.
But cops know that the badge isn’t the big deal. It’s the “credentials” that matter. I had but one of those. And I turned it in like a good boy.
The story by Michael Schmidt in the New York Times.
NYPD cars are getting a low-frequency device to supplement their lights and siren.
Why do I have the feeling I’m not going to like this.
I think sirens should be quieter, not louder. We don’t need to escalate noise in the city. The problem isn’t that people don’t notice lights and sirens, it’s that they don’t care. I don’t see the Rumbler changing that.
The New York Timesreports:
Documents filed in Brooklyn against the driver, Najibullah Zazi, contend he bought chemicals needed to build a bomb — hydrogen peroxide, acetone and hydrochloric acid — and in doing so, Mr. Zazi took a critical step made by few other terrorism suspects.
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“The ingredients here are quite scary,” and the government’s statements have had none of the bombast and exaggeration that accompanied some previous arrest announcements.
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“You don’t manufacture homemade TATP explosives unless you want to kill people and destroy infrastructure.”
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In some earlier investigations, federal officials seized on what were widely viewed as marginal cases in an apparent effort to show results and justify aggressive steps being taken in the campaign against terrorism. As a result, people in and out of government have become dubious about assertions of the grave danger posed by any particular group of defendants.
Leonard Levitt writes a good column. He has some harsh words for the NYPD Intelligence Division and the recent NYPD/FBI/terrorism case.
The Intelligence Division under Cohen and his crony, Assistant Commissioner Larry Sanchez, is operating as a mini-CIA with no accountability and with no model to guide it.
Now it appears that these lone wolves appear to have mishandled the investigation into the city’s first known major terrorism threat since 9/ll.
One can only wonder how many other terrorism suspects were the subjects of NYPD conversations with Afzali–and how many of them he alerted.
Here’s the latest in the Times.