Putting the "Criminal" in Criminal Justice System

Cops don't need to follow the rules. Or the law. Do they? Nineteen D.C. Police Officers Are Under Criminal Investigation for Questionable Gun Seizures, According to Court Records.

Prosecutors are dropping dozens of criminal cases, and courts are reversing guilty judgments due to alleged police misconduct.

Maybe they do, and they just don't think that they do.

In a story familiar to Chicago residents, we have a specialized unit focused on violent crime. This being the Seventh District crime suppression team, from Washington D.C.

At least 19 sworn MPD officers are under criminal investigation, the USAO says in court records, after MPD forwarded a pair of reports to federal prosecutors to consider criminal charges. (MPD denied City Paper’s Freedom of Information Act request for the reports.) A 20th officer was also implicated in the investigation, but resigned before the probe began. The USAO’s search for criminal wrongdoing follows MPD’s internal investigation that now-former Chief Robert Contee announced in October 2022.

At the time, Contee said the investigation was limited to just seven cops—five officers and two sergeants—who had been suspended or put on desk duty. Supervisors initially noticed that officers’ body camera footage did not match what they wrote in their reports and that officers had confiscated illegal firearms but let the suspects walk free

It seems that the officers on this "special team" would turn off their body-worn cameras during "crucial moments" of many gun arrests. They also seem to have had the idea that police reports were supposed to be fictional, because what they were writing wasn't true.

There is more click thru.

Chicago PD has had a Special Operations Section; it was shut down in 2007 amid allegations of kidnapping and murder-for-hire. Then there was the Gang Unit, in which some of the members were accused of getting bogus search warrants in order to steal from drug dealers. (I don't know how the trials turned out.) "Get it done at all costs" is not the way to get good policing.

Still I expect that no one will learn that lesson. (Hat tip to The Gun Blog Black List: 19 DC Cops Investigated For Questionable Firearms Seizures - John Crump News .)