The Price of Pork

Abusive cops are costing already cash-strapped cities across the U.S. millions of dollars in settlements, but civil rights activists and attorneys warn that the payouts will continue unless the criminal justice system begins to prosecute its out-of-control officers.

Rafael Perez, a member of the CRASH (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) Gang Unit, testified as a police informant that he and other officers often falsely accused and framed gang members for crimes.

In Chicago the mayor has put city employees on unpaid leave to help fill a budget shortfall. But a little over a year ago, Chicago officials agreed to pay $19.8 million to four men who suffered police torture under then-commander Jon Burge. Some $30 million has been spent to settle assorted lawsuits connected with the case, which stretches back to abuses during the 1980s and 1990s.

The $30 million payout doesn’t count millions of dollars spent defending Burge after he was fired by the police department in 1993…

Current budget problems might cause taxpayers to take a look at how their money is spent, but in Chicago $18 million was paid to the family of LaTanya Haggerty, a black woman shot to death by police in 1999. In 1995, a New York Times editorial noted that in the “cash-starved” Big Apple, brutality settlements and court judgments cost the city $87 million over five years.

See entire article at Frost Illustrated.

Highlights from part 2:

Haddad said that in a 2004 lawsuit he filed in Oakland, the police chief acknowledged a longstanding pattern of improper strip searches of people on the street. After four years, his firm uncovered some 40 victims of the strip searches. In 2008, although a federal judge ruled that the policies were unconstitutional, the city has not revised the policy and continues to use it.

…it takes at least $50,000 to even bring a civil rights lawsuit alleging police brutality. Such cases are difficult to win because police officers are protected by the principle of qualified immunity…

…police officers have strong police unions that put a great deal of pressure on police chiefs, district attorneys and whoever they feel is a threat to cops who step out of line…

Click here for Part 2 in its entirety.

I’m still collecting info on the Oscar Grant case:

Did a cop affair spark the murder of Oscar Grant?

Burris, attorney for Oscar Grant’s family, thinks maybe.

Burris’ complaint, aside from alleging the affair, contends that this female officer “got in the face of the young men and repeatedly pointed her Taser at them, threatening to tase them in the face”.

Later in the article Burris says he will provide their names if asked.

Well. We already have one of their names: Anthony/Tony “Punchy” Pirone. We know this because in his defense he stated he was trying to protect a female coworker. That’s what Punchy Pirone’s lawyer, Bill Rapoport, is using as Punchy’s defense. In that defense, Rapoport claimed that the female in question was Pirone’s partner.

(If you saw the footage you’d know that there’s no way this is factual. But the claim itself does reveal what Burris called “misplaced chivalry”. I prefer to think of it as the histrionics of a puerile idiot.)

Anyway. So—get the name of Pirone’s female partner and we know her name, too. Her name should be known: after all, she also contributed to this unnecessary murder.

Hope you two weren’t married to other ppl. You know. Wouldn’t want your lives to be ruined over such blasé events in your lives such as terrorizing and murdering citizens.