Your Tax Dollars at Work?

FBI wiretaps are being cut off by telephone companies because of  the bureau’s repeated failure to pay their bills on time.

An audit released January 10 by the Justice Department blamed the FBI’s lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations.  Costs for wiretaps from one company alone totaled $66,000.

“We also found that late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI resulting in lost evidence,” according to the audit by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.

According to reports, more than half of 990 bills to pay for telecommunication surveillance in five unidentified FBI field offices were not paid on time.

Generally, the audit noted, the money pays for leases, cars and surveillance.  The audit focused on what the bureau admitted was an “antiquated” system for tracking money sent to its 56 field offices nationwide. The highly edited version of Fine’s 87-page report was deemed too sensitive to be viewed publicly.

A call to release the entire audit has been made by the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been critical of some of the government’s wiretapping programs.  The ACLU also commented on tele-communication companies that allow the eavesdropping as long as the companies are getting paid to do so.

“It seems the telecoms, who are claiming they were just being ‘good patriots’ when they allowed the government to spy on us without warrants, are more than willing to pull the plug no national security investigations when the government falls behind on its billds,” former FBI agent Michael German, said.  Germen is the ACLU’s national security policy counsel.  “To put it bluntly, it sounds as though the telecoms believe it when the FBI says the warrant is in the mail, but not when they say the check is in the mail.”

Incidents such as the FBI employee who plead guilty in June 2006 for stealing $25,000 for her personal use were blamed, in large part, on the faulty bookkeeping, according to the audit.

“As demonstrated by the FBI employee who stole funds intended to support undercover activities, procedural controls by themselves have not ensured proper tracking and use of confidential case funds,” it concluded.

Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cop Stories
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/517/police_drug_corruption

A crooked Florida cop seeks a sentence cut, and two more jail guards get in trouble. There's some funny accounting in some Mississippi anti-drug task forces, a pot-peddling Houston cop is in hot water, there's a bunch of dope missing from the Boston police evidence room, and crooked cops are headed for prison in Chicago, Nashville, and New Haven. Let's get to it:

In Miami, a former Hollywood police sergeant convicted in a drug sting is seeking a sentence cut. Former officer Jeff Courtney, one of four Hollywood officers convicted in an operation where FBI agents posed as heroin dealers, is seeking a three-year reduction in his nine-year sentence. US attorneys agreed, saying he offered "substantial assistance" to prosecutors and should be rewarded. Courtney and fellow officers Sgt. Kevin Companion, Detective Thomas Simcox and Officer Stephen Harrison were arrested in February after admitting they helped protect a 10-kilogram shipment of heroin for the FBI agents, who were posing as mobsters. All four pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to possess and distribute more than a kilogram of heroin and all are doing between nine and 14 years.

In Florence, Arizona, a Pinal County Sheriff's Office jail guard was indicted December 27 for conspiracy to take contraband into a correctional facility and conspiracy to transport and/or sell marijuana. Jose Dolores Felix, 45, has been transferred to the Maricopa County Jail and placed on unpaid administrative leave.

In Reed City, Michigan, an Osceola County special prosecutor is pondering charges against a jail guard after he admitted stealing and using prescription drugs intended for inmates. The officer, whose name has been withheld pending formal charges, was arrested December 27 after confessing to the misdeed to investigators from the Michigan Sheriffs' Association. The Osceola County Sheriff's Department contacted the state organization to investigate after it noticed pills were missing. [Ed: Another case where the question needs to be asked, corruption or desperation? More facts than were reported are needed to know for sure.

In Chicago, three former Chicago police officers were sentenced to prison last week for stealing drugs from dealers and then reselling them. Former officer Eural Black got 40 years, Broderick Jones got 25 years, and Darek Haynes got 19 years. The three went down in a joint 2005 investigation by the FBI and Chicago police into cops working with drug dealers. Five dealers were also arrested. The dealers would tip off Jones to where he and his comrades could steal drugs, mainly cocaine and marijuana, and the cops would then raid the place, but instead of arresting the dealers, they resold their wares.

In New Haven, Connecticut, a former New Haven police detective was sentenced to prison Monday for falsifying evidence and stealing money during drug investigations. Former detective Jose Silva had pleaded guilty three months ago to one count of deprivation of individual rights for what prosecutors called his minor role in wrongdoing uncovered during a joint state-federal probe of the department. That probe resulted in the arrest of the department's head narcotics officer and the months-long disbanding of the drug squad. Silva confessed to standing by while another detective moved seized drugs during a raid to bolster the case against a suspect and to splitting with his partner $1,000 confiscated during a drug raid. He got 90 days.

In Nashville, a former Nashville police officer was sentenced to 12 years in prison last Friday for his role in a plot to rip off drug dealers. Former officer Ernest Cecil got 12 years in federal prison for his role in the scheme where the nephew of one of the cops helped them pinpoint and rob a cocaine dealer, but disguised it as a legitimate law enforcement operation. The nephew then peddled the cocaine, and the crooked cops pocketed $70,000.

In Houston, a a Houston police officer was arrested Wednesday for delivery of between 5 and 50 pounds of marijuana, a second degree felony. Officer Traci Tennarse, 29, is a Class B officer who works in an administrative capacity in the department Identification Division where she checks fingerprints of all suspects brought to the county jail. She has been relieved of duty with pay, but at last report was being held in the very jail where she checked prints.

In Boston, some 700 bags of drug evidence have gone missing at the Boston Police Department central drug depository, a 14-month investigation into missing evidence has found. Another 265 evidence bags had been tampered with, in some cases with drug evidence replaced by aspirin tablets. Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis announced last Friday that the most likely culprit is a police officer because only police are allowed into the depository. Boston police, Suffolk County prosecutors, and the FBI have launched a joint investigation. The 12 officers who worked at the depository were removed last October. Among the missing drugs are cocaine, heroin, Oxycontin, and marijuana.

In Jackson, Mississippi, at least three of the state's multi-jurisdictional anti-drug task forces are being investigated over suspicious payment vouchers for drug buys and time sheets that appeared to show officers in two places at the same time. The irregularities appeared during routine audits in 2006 and have resulted in at least one task force, North Central, losing its state-disbursed federal funding for the last two years. Officials from the South Central Narcotics Task Force and the Tri-County Narcotics Task force are appealing decisions to deny them funding as well. The state Department of Public Safety has requested that the US Justice Department investigate.