County Ass't Prosecutor Arrested for Drug Posession

Story by Intrepid

Cop Caught Planting Evidence

Feb, 21, 2008
COOKEVILLE, Tenn. -- A federal lawsuit was filed on Thursday accusing Cookeville police of “excessive use of force” and “planting contraband" during a domestic assault arrest last year.

This cop was so arrogant that he looked at the dash camera, then turned his back in an attempt to hide his hand, which reached into his shirt, stuck his hand in the pocket of the man detained and claimed to have found “weed.”

Story and video

He Should Have Kept his Bullet in His Pocket

Feb 21, 7:43 PM (ET)
FARGO, N.D. (AP) - A Cass County Sheriff's deputy who accidentally fired his handgun in a courthouse restroom has been suspended for eight days without pay. Authorities said Dean Wawers, 57, also will receive a written reprimand in personnel file.

No one was hurt when the gun belonging Wawers discharged during lunch hour on Jan. 10.

Fargo police said an investigation determined that his weapon was discharged accidentally.

Authorities said he had hung the gun by its trigger guard, and the gun caught on the hook and discharged into the ceiling when he went to retrieve it.

Tennessee Mayor Arrested

Feb 20, 5:08 PM (ET)
Red Boiling Springs, TN

Story by Intrepid

Red Boiling Springs, like many American towns, has seen better days. At one time it was a very popular resort town where people came to “take the waters” from the various mineral springs. Not that many people visit the two remaining hotels anymore.

Businesses closed, one after another, until there isn’t much left. Tax revenues left along with the businesses. And, as if this weren’t enough, the Mayor was arrested today for official misconduct and theft. He is accused of stealing sewer pipe and gasoline for his personal use. The arrest followed an FBI investigation.

Mayor Kenneth Hollis was taken in custody today and released on a $2500 bond. He is scheduled to appear in court on June 2.

Psychologically Unfit?

Feb 20, 5:08 PM (ET)
ROGERS, Ark. (AP) - Police are conducting an internal investigation into an allegation that a lieutenant used his stun gun to shock a cow and shared a videotape of the incident with other department employees.

Police Chief Steve Helms said Tuesday the inquiry began after he received a complaint from the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. A letter dated Feb. 11 from PETA representative Stephanie Bell complained that Lt. David Mitchell filmed himself using the electronic stun device on the cow.

Electronic stun guns are used as less-lethal weapons to subdue people who pose a threat to officers.

Bell said in the letter that Mitchell distributed the video as a joke among friends and co-workers and she notes that animal cruelty is a misdemeanor crime in Arkansas.

Helms didn't immediately return a call for comment on Wednesday. City Attorney Ben Lipscomb said Tuesday that the alleged incident happened 2 1/2 years ago, which would be beyond the statute of limitations for misdemeanors. Lipscomb said there would be no point in pursuing a criminal investigation.

Helms said a captain in the department will conduct the investigation and Mitchell will remain on regular duty.

Law Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/524/police_drug_corruption

Slim pickings on the corrupt cop front this week, but we still have a Los Angeles probation officer rounded up in a major bust and a small town Pennsylvania cop about to pay for his big ambitions. Let's get to it:

In Los Angeles, an LA County probation officer was arrested over the weekend in a major federal drug bust that netted a dozen people in the San Gabriel and Pomona valleys. Probation Officer Crystal Dillard was arrested along with her boyfriend, Jerron Johns, whom authorities identified as a member of the Crips. She is accused of participating in multiple crack cocaine sales. Dillard and Johns appeared in a 17-count indictment accusing 23 defendants of participating in a ring that sold marijuana, cocaine, and crack cocaine. Dillard is accused of making drug drops at various locations where Johnson would pick them up and deliver them to a person who turned out to be a confidential informant. Dillard and Johns are now in federal custody.

In Pittsburgh, a former South Fayette Township patrolman awaits sentencing after pleading guilty to conspiring to distribute cocaine. Bernard Golling and his friend Michael Monz were arrested in July upon receiving nine pounds of cocaine in a Fedex shipment. Monz was sentenced last Friday to 57 months in federal prison. Golling will be sentenced May 23. He faces more time than Monz because he was in uniform when he picked up the package and thus carried a gun during the commission of a drug offense.

Columbia
In one of the most depraved cases of corruption in the Colombian armed forces in recent years, a Colombian court Monday convicted an army colonel and 14 soldiers of massacring 10 members of an elite, US-trained anti-drug police unit and an informant at the behest of drug traffickers. A judge in Cali found Col. Bayron Carvajal and his soldiers guilty of aggravated homicide for the May 2006 ambush outside a rural nursing home near Cali. The men will be sentenced in two weeks.

The soldiers bushwhacked the police unit as it was about to seize 220 pounds of cocaine that the informant had told them was stashed inside a psychiatric facility in the town of Jamundi. The soldiers fired hundreds of rounds at the police and attacked them with hand grenades. Six of the police officers were found to have been shot at close range. No drugs were recovered.

During the trial, more than a hundred witnesses testified. Some of them linked Carvajal to both leftist guerrillas and drug traffickers. Carvajal claimed his troops were attacking leftist rebels working with drug traffickers, but that didn't fly. Neither did the military's original explanation that the deaths were accidental. The military later conceded that its inquiries suggested links between the soldiers and drug gangs operating in the region.

Under Plan Colombia, the US has sent an average of $650 million a year in recent years to fight the drug trade and the leftist guerrillas of the FARC. Most of that money has gone to expand, equip, and train the Colombian military and police. Part of the rationale for that aid was that it would reduce corruption and human rights abuses in the Colombian armed forces.

The Carvajal case is not the only one to tarnish the image of the Colombian military lately. In the last two years, high-ranking military officers have been accused of selling secrets to drug traffickers to help them escape capture and planting fake bombs to advance their careers. Killings of noncombatants by the military are also reportedly on the increase after decreasing during the early years of Plan Colombia.

Meanwhile, for all the billions spent, that Colombian cocaine just keeps on coming.