Baltimore Elite Police Corruption

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Baltimore Elite Police Corruption

Postby Cobra-D » Mon Feb 05, 2018 6:22 pm

The Baltimore PD's Gun Trace Task Force has come under investigation for some really shady shit.

It all started back in 2011 with the death of a woman due to an overdosed. After investigating of where she got the drugs, it was discovered that one of the people that was helping with the group that was distributing drugs was a police officer that was a part of the gun trace task force, which eventually led to 7 more members of the task force being indicted aswell for racketeering but are also accused of executing searches without warrants, invading private homes, robbing suspects and innocent citizens of cash and reselling drugs on the street obviously.


You're probably thinking damn these are some pretty shitty cops, no way this could be worse. Yeah so about that, during one of the trials it was revealed that officers were directed by Sargent Wayne Jenkins to carry a toy gun in case "we accidentally hit somebody or got into a shootout, so we could plant them." Which is problematic considering 86 people were killed including Tamir Rice and a 13 year old for allegedly carrying a toy gun.

Things like this is why certain communities don't like cops, and I know that this is just a few bad people and the majority of cops are decent people but the thing is a bad cop has far worse ramification then a good cop.
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Last edited by Cobra-D on Tue Feb 13, 2018 9:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Another "cops did something horrible" story again...sorr

Postby Absentia » Mon Feb 05, 2018 7:19 pm

As far as throwing the whole justice system into chaos, this is about as bad as it gets. Good luck convicting anybody of anything now that there's a detective admitting to a systematic plot to plant evidence. And get ready for an appeal of every conviction this unit has ever gotten.
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Re: Another "cops did something horrible" story again...sorr

Postby DamianaRaven » Mon Feb 05, 2018 8:16 pm

Cobra-D wrote:...I know that this is just a few bad people and the majority of cops are decent people...


I'd like to know where were these "decent people" when their own colleagues were running wild right under their noses. Were they complicit in looking the other way, or just incompetent? This culture of tolerance and impunity and "Blue Brotherhood" makes me strongly doubt the alleged prevalence of the Good Cop. Until cops start standing up to their own, they're ALL a part of this godawful mess. (Let's just go ahead and shove those "shame on you" rebukes right back up whatever ass they fell out of.)
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Re: Another "cops did something horrible" story again...sorr

Postby NathanLoiselle » Mon Feb 05, 2018 9:56 pm

Shoves his "shame on you" rebuke up his ass. There, ya happy now?
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Re: Another "cops did something horrible" story again...sorr

Postby DamianaRaven » Mon Feb 05, 2018 10:03 pm

I didn't mean ANY "shame on you" rebukes. Just the ones for me, about this. You probably just shoved a perfectly legitimate shaming up your ass.

Back to the subject at hand, I'm just going to put this story right here, since the thread title is nice and inclusive!
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Re: Another "cops did something horrible" story again...sorr

Postby Absentia » Mon Feb 05, 2018 10:22 pm

DamianaRaven wrote:
Cobra-D wrote:...I know that this is just a few bad people and the majority of cops are decent people...


I'd like to know where were these "decent people" when their own colleagues were running wild right under their noses. Were they complicit in looking the other way, or just incompetent? This culture of tolerance and impunity and "Blue Brotherhood" makes me strongly doubt the alleged prevalence of the Good Cop. Until cops start standing up to their own, they're ALL a part of this godawful mess. (Let's just go ahead and shove those "shame on you" rebukes right back up whatever ass they fell out of.)


It's quite possible that this particular task force was wholly corrupt. It sounds like a relatively small and insular unit; if the leadership of a unit like that is corrupt, they can target other corrupt cops for recruitment and force out anyone who doesn't play along. That doesn't mean that the police department at large is mostly corrupt, just that one or two bad apples found their way into a leadership position.
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Re: Another "cops did something horrible" story again...sorr

Postby DamianaRaven » Mon Feb 05, 2018 11:48 pm

People keep saying "bad apples" as if the phrase were that a few bad apples is nothing to worry about. The metaphor you're mangling is that ONE bad apple spoils the whole barrel. What were all these "good cops" doing that this kind of corruption and crime can go on right under their noses until a dead body turns up that can't be ignored or written off as "scum"? I believe that a lot of these "good cops" deliberately ignore MASSIVE clues and red flags because they don't want deal with the (admittedly cruel and unfair) backlash that comes with breaking the Blue Wall. I don't think those guys are "good cops" just because they don't join in the corruption. Their complicity might not necessarily make them bad people, but I could never (in good conscience) say that they're "good cops." At best, they suck at their jobs. At worst, they're part of the corruption.

And then there's just a murderous degree of cowardice going on, with cops just shooting at anything that moves because they know there will be no hassle about it and maybe even a long paid vacation and/or a giant pile of donations from Copsuckers United. I'm frankly getting tired of seeing it and it does leave a sour taste in my mouth where police are concerned. Where are the "good cops" who stand up to this? I'll tell you where - run out of the profession.
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Re: Another "cops did something horrible" story again...sorr

Postby Absentia » Tue Feb 06, 2018 1:15 am

My point was that in this case the "bad" cops were probably able to hide what they were doing from the "good" cops because they had complete control of this particular unit.


Imagine you worked at a company with several small offices all over the country, and it turns out that everybody at the Kansas City office is stealing from the company. And they're able to get away with it for a long time because the guy running the Kansas City office is also the guy running the embezzlement scheme; he can hand-pick his own accountants and fire anybody who doesn't want to play along.

Now clearly, this guy in Kansas City should never have been put in a leadership position. And it's a pretty big failure of oversight if nobody is checking up on him to see if he might be on the take. But would you say that every employee at the Seattle office is complicit because they didn't do anything to stop what was going on in Kansas City, even though the two offices weren't dealing with each other regularly? Seattle might have heard rumors or seen signs, but there was no hard evidence because the other office was able to keep all their dirty dealings in-house. Don't you think it's a little unfair to hold them responsible?
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Re: Another "cops did something horrible" story again...sorr

Postby iMURDAu » Tue Feb 06, 2018 2:10 am

Grew up in Maryland, visited Baltimore literally hundreds of times, seen The Wire a couple times, not surprised one bit.

But really you can kind of expect this to happen when you isolate and concentrate power into a group within a police force that doesn't seem to be accountable to anyone except the leader of the group.
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Re: Another "cops did something horrible" story again...sorr

Postby DamianaRaven » Tue Feb 06, 2018 2:21 am

Absentia wrote:Seattle might have heard rumors or seen signs, but there was no hard evidence because the other office was able to keep all their dirty dealings in-house. Don't you think it's a little unfair to hold them responsible?


Not if this "company's" sole "product" was crime prevention and public safety and generally keeping EVERYONE from stealing each other blind. It is literally a cop's job to follow up on "rumors and signs" and actually LOOK for hard evidence instead of just taking everything around them for granted.
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Baltimore Elite Police Corruption

Postby Marcuse » Tue Feb 13, 2018 8:56 pm

GTTF? GTFO

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43035628

I don't want to raise this with a notion that all police officers are like this, or that we should generally distrust the police because of it. However, one thing that often comes up when people say that the police in the US aren't working for the people is that they require "more training". While that might be the case in other situations, it's hard to see how this kind of thing could apply to this one, given their status as an elite anti-weapons unit, which were selling their seized firearms back into criminal ownership. One of the group was noted as advising members to carry BB guns that look like real firearms in order to plant them on unarmed people they might shoot to give them a defence. If things like that are happening among supposedly highly trained units, what's going wrong here?
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Re: Baltimore Elite Police Corruption

Postby DamianaRaven » Tue Feb 13, 2018 9:42 pm

That's why I think the "more training" excuse is just that - a lame excuse to avoid admitting to the fact that an unacceptable number of police officers are just BAD PEOPLE.
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Re: Baltimore Elite Police Corruption

Postby Absentia » Tue Feb 13, 2018 10:04 pm

Not all bad cops are bad for the same reasons. Most of the talk I've heard about the need for more training is centered on things like racial sensitivity and high-pressure situations, which is a totally different thing than what we're talking about here. These guys were just greedy criminals with uniforms.
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Re: Baltimore Elite Police Corruption

Postby iMURDAu » Tue Feb 13, 2018 10:10 pm

Marcuse wrote:GTTF? GTFO

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43035628

I don't want to raise this with a notion that all police officers are like this, or that we should generally distrust the police because of it. However, one thing that often comes up when people say that the police in the US aren't working for the people is that they require "more training". While that might be the case in other situations, it's hard to see how this kind of thing could apply to this one, given their status as an elite anti-weapons unit, which were selling their seized firearms back into criminal ownership. One of the group was noted as advising members to carry BB guns that look like real firearms in order to plant them on unarmed people they might shoot to give them a defence. If things like that are happening among supposedly highly trained units, what's going wrong here?


Autonomy was granted to the highly trained unit. Idk if anyone else is up for watching a series marathon of The Shield but it seems like Baltimore's elected leadership might want to check that show out. Like back when it was airing...
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