Coyote Blog

Often we libertarians think of making common cause with liberals on social and civil rights issues while making common cause with conservatives on fiscal and regulatory issues.

But these are rules of thumb, as often those we think of as allies on a certain issue abandon us in favor of statism.  Certain conservatives do when they give up capitalism for corporatism.  And Ken at Popehat has a fabulous example of a situation — protection of defendant’s rights in a trial — where expected liberal support does not materialize.   He discusses the case of an accused child pornography creator

In real life, the accused has the right to review the evidence against him. But how you feel about that scenario can help to determine whether you lean liberal orlibertarian — whether you are suspicious of state power in all instances, or whether you trust the state and look to its firm hand when it comes to hot-button issues, like OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

We’ve been conditioned by the culture to expect that “liberal” and “supportive of due process and fundamental fairness to all people accused of crimes” go hand-in-hand. It’s a lie.

I think the same holds true in other circumstances, like rape trials.  Rights liberals would normally fight for, say, in the case of an accused black murderer in Mississippi were totally tossed aside for white college students accused of rape at Duke.

Until two days ago, I had never ever heard of Nancy Grace but apparently she has a TV show or something and uses it to actively root for prosecutorial abuse.  The presumption of innocence is frustrating until they come for you.

The point of this story seems to be to criticize cops for tasering, beating, pepper-spraying, and incarcerating a handicapped boy who apparently did nothing wrong.

Dayton police “mistook” a mentally handicapped teenager’s speech impediment for “disrespect,” so they Tasered, pepper-sprayed and beat him and called for backup from “upward of 20 police officers” after the boy rode his bicycle home to ask his mother for help, the boy’s mom says.

But the larger issue is the culture that seems to exist among many police that disrespecting them is somehow a crime.   Sorry, but it is not, anywhere in this country, a crime to disrespect a cop.

As an aside, the three words that are always a big flashing warming light for me are “he disrespected me.”  I am amazed when I hear this on the news all the time as if it justified whatever bad behavior that was to follow.  In investigating customer service problems in our company, any employee of mine whose explanation of an incident with a customer that includes the line “he disrespected me” is not going to be an employee very long.  Nothing gets in the way of good customer service faster than an employee trying to save face or protect his or her ego.

via Mike Riggs

Well, the execreble Sheriff Joe Arpaio, America’s most-desirous-of-PR-exposure lawman, is at it again.  Phoenix will be mobbed by the press in a couple of weeks when the MLB All-Star Game comes to town, and of course Sheriff Joe will be hurt and depressed if he doesn’t get himself in front of all those cameras.

So this is apparently his plan for doing so:

Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s publicity stunt of choice for All-Star weekend: a female chain gang that probably will make a stop at Chase Field to pick up garbage as the national sporting press tries to cover a baseball game….

This particular gang is comprised of women convicted of DUI. They will be decked out in the standard striped uniforms. However, they will also be wearing pink T-shirts with messages about DUI.

Because nothing says “thoughtful and humane treatment for alcohol problems” like parading prisoners in front of national TV audiences like a modern remake of Cool Hand Luke.

We give special, unique powers to use force to the police, and it is horrifying to see them used for personal aggrandizement.

By the way, I will share my secret fear.  As you may know, Apriao enjoys leading raids on businesses that hire Mexican immigrants.  His MO is to zip-tie everyone with brown skin or an accent until they can produce proof of citizenship.  My deep fear is that he will run a raid of the concession operations at the ballpark during the game.

Because we give special powers to use force to the police that most of the rest of us do not have, the police need more scrutiny and accountability, not less.  However, the police tend to fight this accountability at every turn — in particular, they tend to want to ban any filming of their public activities, even if they have to do it through violence.  Likely, this is because every time a video surfaces, it seems to contradict the cover story the police involved have agreed to.  I am all for mandatory surveillance of police.

Update: Here is a fun search.  Google:  ”Video Contradicts Police Report” and see how many different hits you get.

Folks in other parts of the country hypothesize that their politicians may or may not have enemies lists, but these are all, frankly, wimpy initiatives when compared to our famous Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his treatment of enemies.  You see, if Sheriff Joe sees you as a political enemy, he brings you up on charges.  When he came in conflict with his bosses, he and his buddy former County attorney Andrew Thomas brought them up on racketeering charges.  When a judge failed to deliver the rulings he wanted in that case, he brought the judge up on bribery charges that fell apart even before the ink was dry (read about some of the hijinx here).

Now there is an ongoing investigation of Sheriff Joe and his department around Arpaio’s attempts to get a political opponent, one of his bosses on the Board of Supervisors Joe Stapely, brought up on charges.  Or at least, be seen in the media as brought up on charges, because it is fairly clear that Arpaio was less interested with the strength of the case (which like many of his other political attacks fell apart nearly immediatley) as casting negative media attention on a political opponent.  Money quote highlighted in bold, from the Phoenix New Times which has a great history of staying on Arpaio’s case but does not write very well organized articles.

About a month after the indictment, MACE [a division within Arpaio's organization] raided the offices of an associate of Stapley’s, developer Conley Wolfswinkel. The claimed justification was that the Sheriff’s Office was looking for evidence of additional crimes that detectives had uncovered in the disclosure-form case.

Knight [leader of MACE] had reviewed the search warrant before a raid on January 22, 2009, and believed that he had enough evidence based on testimony from Stapley’s bookkeeper, Joan Stoops, to carry out the raid. Stoops told detectives that it appeared Wolfswinkel had inked an agreement to pay Stapley hundreds of thousands of dollars in a land deal when Wolfswinkel had business before the Board of Supervisors.

Knight said Sheriff Arpaio reviewed the search warrant personally — and asked Knight why he hadn’t included more details about the case in the warrant. Knight, according to the report, told Arpaio that the details weren’t necessary to establish probable cause, the legal term for the level of evidence needed to persuade a judge to sign a search warrant.

The report doesn’t specify which details Arpaio wanted Knight to add, but it does describe how Arpaio pressed him on the issue, saying he wanted to make sure the warrant would hold up. Knight didn’t buy what Arpaio was saying, believing that the sheriff only wanted the extra information so he could sensationalize the case.

“Are we writing a press release or are we writing a search warrant?” Knight said he asked the sheriff. “I just need to be clear on what we’re trying to produce here.”

The sheriff stared at him and said sternly: “Get the information in there,” the report states. Arpaio then got up and walked out.

Knight did as he was told and included the superfluous information. He had the warrant signed and prepared his deputies for the raid on Wolfswinkel’s Tempe business office. He recalled that Arpaio’s right-hand man, then-Chief Deputy David Hendershott, called Knight numerous times, asking: “Are we in yet?”

Hendershott, Knight stated, told him that as soon as the search warrant was signed, Knight was to go to the nearest Kinko’s and fax a copy to sheriff’s headquarters.

“So we get in; we secure the place,” Knight said to investigators. “I run over to the nearest Kinko’s, which is three or four miles away, [and] fax the document over to him.

“By the time I get back to Conley’s business, I’ve already got a news helicopter flying overhead.”

Knight found out later that the search warrant had been handed to the media in conjunction with a press release.

A news conference was under way before Knight got back to his office.

Arpaio also tailored his public statement to emphasize the shocking revelation that Stapley and Wolfswinkel were being investigated in an alleged “bribery” scheme.

The bribery story fell apart within days, by the way, as the officers realized they had the dates wrong on the land deal such that the deal and the supposed political payoff could not be related.

Arpaio faces a myriad of charges.  His defense was that it all happened without his knowledge, which is laughable given the way he is known to run the department.   He is claiming in his PR that the whole department is created in his image but that he has no responsibility for what it does.  Like any good mobster, he apparently had a consigliere named Hendershott who he is attempting to claim now was a loan wolf rather than Arpaio’s right hand man, in order to deflect accountability.

The entire article is worth  a read for Arpaio-philes and phobes alike.  It serves as a good summary of some of the worst excesses of Arpaio’s reign.

Update:  By the way, does anyone feel comfortable with a police department (much less sheriff Joe) having the weapon shown in this picture.   Can one imagine any legitimate use, short of perhaps a full-blow zombie invasion?   (source)

From the AZ Republic

Arizona police officers accused of misconduct will soon have more protection.

Gov. Jan Brewer has signed six bills, backed by police unions, that spell out procedures for internal investigations.

Great, because it was not already hard enough to take action against bad cops in a system where all the insiders – police and prosecutors – generally close ranks to defend them from scrutiny.

The new laws are not all bad — at least one gives protections to internal whistle-blowers, something that is needed in a police culture that has an effective law of omerta against cops who call out other cops for bad behavior.  My guess, though, is that this rule will be used by unions who want to harass police management, rather than to protect street cops who testify against other street cops.

Defenders of the law said

Police unions weren’t asking for anything more than the due process an arrested citizen receives, said Larry A. Lopez, president of the Arizona Conference of Police and Sheriffs.

“Just because we wear uniforms, we’re not relegated to a watered-down version of constitutional rights,” said Lopez, a Tucson officer.

I have said a number of times that this is not quite true.  Police are given powers to use force against other citizens that the rest of us do not possess.  This necessitates a kind of scrutiny and oversight by the state that would not be appropriate or legal for the average citizen.  For example, police simply do not have the privacy rights in conducting their jobs that the rest of us do.  We have seen too many times that when we give police broad discretion, special powers, and no oversight (or even a nudge and a wink guarantee against oversight), bad things inevitably happen.

If you are confused about what I am talking about, go read Radley Balko’s archives.

We give police officers special powers to use force that we allow no other citizen.  As such, they should be subjected to special accountability and monitoring.  One wonders how many people have served time in jail for officers making up BS stories, actually reversing the direction of an assault, and making it stick because the legal system circles the wagons to protect its own.  Thank god for video.

Joe Arpaio, I suppose seeing how Ben Quayle rode his writing gig for the Dirty into Congress, has decided he wants to compete with all manner of bottom-fishing web sites.  He has created a special web feature in a what he states is an attempt to drive more people to his web site — the goofy booking photo of the day.

Several local lawyers, including some mental health advocates, are asking if it is appropriate for a sheriff to run online contests to vote for the inmate with the worst booking photos.  This is a great example of a situation (like video surveillance) where public officials have less, rather than more rights and privileges than ordinary citizens.  Kudos to Scott Ambrose for making a point that is seldom made, and we should remind politicians of all the time:

Arpaio says that booking photos are aired in the news media every day. A local alternative weekly even took a page from Arpaio’s playbook earlier this year and let readers have fun with some of the sheriff’s mug shots.

“Sheriff Joe will argue that ‘I can do this because New Times can,’ ” Ambrose said. “There’s lots of things the government can’t do that you and I can.”

I have another question – for what possible public purpose is Arpaio spending taxpayer money to drive people to his web site?  This is so incredibly self-serving its hard to believe, but fits right in with Arpaio’s whole history of taxpayer-funded self-promotion.

PS-  I have always argued that booking photos should not be public information, as they amount to an improper punishment.  The legal system has a technical term for someone who has been arrested but has not gone to trial:  Innocent.

National security letters strike me as one of the worst Constitutional abuses to come out of the last 10 years, which is saying a lot given the post-9/11 theories of executive authority from torture to indefinite detention to even ordering people killed.

The national security letters deserve particular scrutiny because they evade the Fourth Amendment while building in a prior restraint on speech that prevents recipients from challenging the letters or even complaining about them.  This is self-sustaining policy — ie policy that prevents the dissemination of information that might prove it is a threat or a failure — at its worst.

The Justice Department’s inspector general revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been systematically abusing one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act: the expanded power to issue “national security letters.” It no doubt surprised most Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under this provision — demands issued without a showing of probable cause or prior judicial approval — to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. It did not, however, come as any surprise to me.

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand — a context that the FBI still won’t let me discuss publicly — I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.

Anyone want to bet how many of these things really are national security related, and how many are related to other investigations (particularly drugs)?

There are zillions of people involved in these major investigations.  There is no good argument against adding one more who is in on the secret – ie a judge – and a lot of reasons to do so.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio constantly gets a pass for some of the most outrageous hijinx from Phoenix’s conservative population that sees him as the last bastion between them and brown-skinned people.  Tell someone he is above the law, and he is going to act above the law

​As Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio crows this morning about how his agency busted a total of six illegal immigrants for using fake IDs so they could work at a Mesa dry cleaner, county budget officials unveiled the results of a six-month investigation into how his office is misspending your money.

If you pay taxes in Maricopa County, it’s not pretty.

In total, the county finds that Arpaio and his cronies misspent $99.5 million over the last eight years, the majority of which came from the sheriff’s detention fund.

“For eight years, you have been signing paperwork that says your budget is balanced, but it’s not,” County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox reportedly told sheriff’s officials at this morning’s meeting of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.

Budget officers reviewed payroll records for 5,700 sheriff’s employee salaries from February 2004 to February 2011 and found that much of what employees were actuallydoing was not what they were getting paid to do.

This is just a sick, scary, amazing story of a man who came within days of execution because prosecutors knowingly withheld exculpatory evidence.  And not something arcane and equivocal, but blood tests that were the wrong type and witness testimony that contradicted the main witness.

The Supreme Court has upheld the effective immunity of prosecutors from any penalties for not following the most basic rules.  Forget sanctions or lost law licenses – why aren’t these prosecutors on trial for attempted murder?  Obviously, with the Supreme Court decision a legislative solution is required, but don’t hold your breath — there is nothing more bipartisan than being “tough on crime” when running for re-election so it is unlikely any safeguards of defendants will be improved.

Just when I thought I couldn’t dislike either actor Steven Seagal or Sheriff Joe Arpaio any more, they team up to set a new low. The short story — Arpaio sent Seagal in a tank to knock down the walls of a home that was suspected of having cockfighting on the premises.  Really.

http://ktar.com/category/local-news-articles/20110215/Arpaio-leads-in-poll-for-Senate-race/

The early returns are in, and right now it would seem Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has the early edge in replacing Jon Kyl.

According to Roll Call, Arpaio led a field of potential Republican candidates by 21 percent in a poll of likely GOP primary voters.

Though this makes us feel better, a little

Maricopa County’s self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff in America,” Joe Arpaio, says he’s considering running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Senator Jon Kyl.

That said, New Times guaran-damn-tees he won’t actually run.

“The issue is whether I want to leave this office and go to Washington and try to make a difference there, which I would do if I run and win,” the 78-year-old Arpaio tells The Hill. “I think I could do that job.”

Sorry, Joe, we’ve heard it all before.

As you may recall, Arpaio pulled a similar stunt last year when he claimed to be considering running for governor. And he did the same thing four years earlier, when he also claimed he was mulling over a run for the governorship.

In neither case did Arpaio actually run.

You see, Arpaio seems to get off on seeing his name in the headlines, and what better way to make that happen than to continually fuel speculation about potentially running for office — and a poll showing he’s the front-runner certainly doesn’t help things.

Update: This was an interesting post about how TV has become far more accepting of police and proprietorial abuse in its heroes, comparing quasi-terrorist Steve McGarrett from the current incarnation of Hawaii 5-0 with the respectful and conscientious Jack Lord version.  Next up, the new show Arpaio 4-8?

Andrew Thomas was very competitive in Radley Balko’s Worst Prosecutor of the Year voting.  But if he had just waited a few days, this news could have easily put Thomas over the top:

The same people responsible for tens of millions in claims being filed against Maricopa County are now drooling after their own pot of gold.

Former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas and David Hendershott, Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s former right-hand man have filed a notice of claim along with Thomas’ former lackey, Lisa Aubuchon, for a combined total of $60 million.
Aubuchon had already filed a $10 million claim; she’s revised that to $22.5 million. Andrew Thomas, who quit the job voters gave him and failed in his bid to become state Attorney General, has the gall to seek $23.5 million from taxpayers. And Hendershott, the infamous Chief Deputy now under investigation following a co-worker’s allegations of corruption and abuse of power, wants $14 million.

For the first time in my life, I voted in a partisan primary for the Coke/Pepsi parties this year specifically to vote against Thomas.  I cannot even imagine why they think they deserve this kind of payoff.  If anyone should be suing, it is the citizens of Maricopa County who should be suing these three.  Lots of articles about him on my site, but this one in the ABA Journal covers a lot of the ground.

It is impossible to trust the judicial process after reading this (via Radley Balko) and realizing that this kind of thing must go on all the time.  In fact, our heroes on TV shows engage in behaviors not much more honorable than this.  You can’t watch a TV crime drama for five minutes without seeing police and prosecutors pressuring witnesses.  I was Castle the other day with my 12-year-old daughter (her favorite show, and being a Nathan Fillion fan I am happy to watch it with her) and as usual they were interviewing some suspect and she started doing what has become her habit in these situations — she started screaming “lawyer — get a lawyer” at the suspect.  Good for her.

It is kind of an interesting exercise to compare the police account of this encounter with the video.   What do your eyes see?

I find it fascinating that so many commenters seem to believe that the police are entirely in the right to physically assault anyone who diss them.    One example:

For the 3 of you who commented above, I hope you never really need the cops.. You have no idea “what’s called for” as you have no law enforcement training (watching “police academy” doesn’t count). the Metro police go out there and do their job as best they can….

Bottom line, don’t mouth off to cops or plan on carrying really good dental insurance.

Or this  (remember, all she did was use words):

She was told to leave, she left and came back and started in with the officer. Too bad for her, she asked for it.

Thanks, police, for making sure we don’t ever have to encounter people in public who are not like ourselves

Finally Metro does something right. I ride the Metro regularly and I am sick and tired of this type of behavior. As a senior citizen I get fed up by the unruly behavior of today’s youth. … As for the cop, thank you

Or this one, where it is implied that it is the state’s duty to use physical violence to enforce etiquette:

What kind of home schooling did she have? Why is she acting like this? I can’t have any pity for her. She needs to take her uncivilized behavior somewhere else. Show some respect please. It appears she has no respect for authority or right or wrong. I feel for her parents if they should see this. Shameful, just shameful. The cop seems to just be doing his job. All she had to do was shut her sailor mouth and act like an adult.

Those who don’t show respect for the state will be tackled and taken to jail.  Metro police might as well come on over to my house and drag we away, because I have no respect for you either.

It pains me to admit that 30 years ago I was just such a “law and order” Conservative.  Bleh.

Shouldn’t a prosecutor who knowingly withheld exculpatory evidence in a death penalty case be treated as an attempted murderer?

Thank goodness for the drug war so we can have crappy asset forfeiture laws that allow this:

You’re free to go — but we’ll keep your money.

That’s the position of Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard on the failed case of Mario de la Fuente Manriquez, a Mexican media millionaire accused of organized crime.

Manriquez was arrested and charged earlier this year with 19 counts of money laundering, assisting a criminal syndicate, conspiracy and fraud. Seven other suspects, including Manriquez’s son, were arrested in the alleged scheme to fraudulently own and operate several Valley nightclubs and exotic car dealerships.

Charges against Manriquez’s son, Mario de la Fuente Mix, were dropped in August. And on Monday, as we reported, the state moved to drop the case against Manriquez.

But the state still wants to keep $12 million of Manriquez’s money that was seized in the case, a spokesman for the AG’s office tells New Times today.

The folks involved don’t strike me as particularly savory characters, but due process is due process and if you drop charges against the guys, the money should be considered legally clean, especially when the authorities confess

Prosecutors acknowledged the money funneled to the United States from Mexico was earned legitimately by Manriquez. In the end, they couldn’t prove he knew what was happening with his dough.

What happened to the money, by the way, is that is was invested in a series of businesses that appear to be entirely legal, their only apparent crime being that the incorporation paperwork omitted the name of Manriquez as a major source of funds.  Wow, money legally earned invested in legal businesses, with the only possible crime a desire for confidentiality (at worst) or a paperwork mistake (at best).  Sure glad our state AG is putting his personal time in on this one.

I do not know Arizona’s forfeiture laws, but if they are like most other states’, they probably allow state authorities to keep the seized money to use as they please, an awfully large incentive for prosecutorial abuse.

This is absolutely awful.  A main who is chained and drugged is being beaten by Maricopa County officers (yes, these guys report to Arpaio).

We can award extra points here to Arpaio who is saying how incredibly difficult it is to detect these incidents – Just think, he says, how much video we would have to go through.  But my untrained eyes show in every case at least 3 and sometimes many more county employees looking on.  Apparently none of these folks reported the incident.  Which means that unlike what they are trying to portray here as an isolated incident due to one bad apple, this is a systematic culture of violence against citizens that pervades the whole organization.

Double extra credit for the implication that none of the onlookers who watched a violent felony in progress and who are nominally law enforcement officers will be punished for covering up the incident  (brief opening commercial)

Most everyone knows that Al Capone was finally nailed for tax evasion, rather than murder, robber, extortion and all the more heinous crimes for which he was mostly likely guilty.  For years, an unfortunately relatively small group of us here in Phoenix have tried to see Sheriff Joe Arpaio brought to justice, or at least removed from office, for his numerous abuses of power.   Lacking the success so far, Arpaio may finally go down for fraud in his management of County funds.

In something that should be a surprise to no one, even his supporters, the supremely arrogant Arpaio did not like state law and the county supervisors rules on where he could spend different parts of his budget.  So it appears he created a shadow payroll system that has only just been discovered that has been paying different people different amounts for different purposes than what shows up in the official County payroll systems, and has been doing so for over a decade.

Deputy County Manager Sandi Wilson and her staff in the Office of Management and Budget for months have worked to figure out how extensive financial problems are, and she expressed shock at the hidden system.

“They’ve developed a system that basically tracks where they are working versus where they are being paid, and they did not update the official database, which led to the potential problems,” Wilson said. “I think they deliberately hid this info from us.”

The employee-tracking database was in a secure criminal-justice computer system accessible only to the Sheriff’s Office. Control of access to that system, known as ICJIS, has been the subject of a long-running and expensive legal battle during the past two years.

County administrators say they were puzzled by the sheriff’s willingness to sue over what they viewed as minor issues related to control of the ICJIS system. The fight by the sheriff to block county access to the system has cost more than $1.6 million.

County officials believe Sheriff’s Chief Deputy David Hendershott sought to limit access to the system to hide the shadow payroll records it contained. Those records showed that potentially hundreds of employees who did no work in the jails were being paid with detention funds.

“That’s a reasonable conclusion to draw, but we don’t know for sure,” Irvine said. “From Maricopa County’s perspective, the ICJIS dispute and lawsuit has made no sense.”

County officials sent information on the payroll system to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for review. That office is conducting a separate abuse-of-power probe of Sheriff Arpaio, his employees and others.

The article fails to mention it, but I believe that the county computer facility mentioned above was the same one that Arpaio sent armed deputies storming in to take over about a year ago.  At the time, no one really bought his explanation that it was about protecting sensitive criminal information from prying eyes.  I hypothesized it was to take control of an email server that had incriminating information about Arpaio, but now it turns out it may have been to protect his shadow payroll system.

Via TJIC, Copblock releases links to police officers accused of committing crimes.  The list for just one week is ridiculously long, and surely would be longer if not for the law of Omerta among police that cause only a small percentage of their crimes to see the light of day.  Congratulations to Phoenix area police (including Mesa and Maricopa County) for making the list seven times.

- Phoenix AZ cop who was charged with murder, planted drugs on mentally challenged homeless lady

- Phoenix AZ cop given 2nd degree murder charge after shooting unarmed man to death

- Mesa AZ cop grabs 2 women by the neck and slams their heads together

- Maricopa County AZ sheriff sued for intentionally locking disabled woman in jail cell w/several men for 6 hours

- 6 Mesa AZ cops sued for tasing, kicking and beating man

- Maricopa County AZ sheriff ordered to fix unconstitutional conditions at jails in ACLU suit by 9th circuit court

- Phoenix AZ cop arrested on DV-related aggravated assault after witness called cops

Solid work for one week.

I had this sent to me by several readers.

In that 2005 incident, Chrisman and his partner arrested a homeless woman on an outstanding warrant. According to the internal affairs investigation, Chrisman and his partner planted drug paraphernalia on the woman — because they wanted to play a joke on the woman, who is mentally challenged.

Take a look at the video — Chrisman puts a brilo pad and pipe in his partner’s left hand. His female partner then pretends to pull the pipe out of the woman’s dress.

Chrisman said he knew the suspect, and just wanted to get a rise out of her. He was suspended for one day and put on the Brady List — his partner was also suspended for one day and put on the Brady List.

The woman wasn’t charged with anything related to the planted evidence.

Video at the link.

It is hard to find the humor in planting evidence on a mentally-challenged homeless woman, though my guess is this became a joke only after the video appeared.

No matter what the officer’s explanation, the disturbing fact is that Phoenix police officers seem to carry on their person, as part of their equipment, throw-down drug paraphernalia.   Why is no one asking why Chrisman had the crack pipe in the first place, or how his team was so well trained that they could wordlessly set up the plant.  This whole episode smacks of something well-practiced.

One of my theories I have mentioned before on this blog is that the worst abuses of freedom occur when the Left and Right in this country agree.  Here is another great example — combine the Right’s law-and-order drive to hand more power to,  and remove accountability from, police and prosecutors with the Left’s need to string up some executives after the Enron collapse — and you get this:

The DOJ has inexplicably teed up another trial of Brown, who was the only one of the Merrill defendants who was convicted on additional charges of perjury and obstruction of justice for having the temerity of protesting his innocence to the grand jury that originally investigated the Nigerian Barge deal. Brown’s new trial is currently scheduled to begin on September 20.

But in the meantime, Brown’s legal team has been leafing through enormous amounts of exculpatory evidence that the Enron Task Force withheld from the Merrill defendants in connection with the first trial back in 2005, but which the DOJ has recently been forced to disclose.

The result of the Brown team’s effort is set forth below in the Supplemental Memorandum in support of a motion for a new trial for Brown on the perjury and obstruction charges (the downloaded version of the memo is bookmarked in Adobe Acrobat to facilitate ease of review). The memorandum details the appalling length that the Enron Task Force went during the first trial in suppressing exculpatory evidence in favor of Brown and his co-defendants and generally disregarding the rule of law in order to obtain convictions. As the memorandum concludes:

The conclusion is now inescapable that the ETF engaged in a calculated, multi-step process to deprive Brown of his constitutional right to Due Process. (1) They repeatedly denied the existence of Brady material, told this court they had met their Brady obligations and fought vehemently against producing anything [exhibit reference and footnote omitted]. They highlighted only selected material in a veritable garden of Brady evidence – much of their selections being vague, tangential or marginal–while working around clear, declarative, relevant exculpatory material even in the same page, paragraph or document. (3) When ordered by the Court to produce summaries to the defense, they further redacted even the Brady material they had themselves highlighted and withheld the crucial facts that they had highlighted as Brady. (4) They egregiously capitalized on their misconduct at trial by making assertions that were directly belied by the exculpatory evidence they withheld.  .  .  .

The memorandum goes on to set out dozens of Brady violations, including charts that compare the exculpatory statements that the Enron Task Force withheld prior to the first trial with the incriminating statements that the Enron Task Force extracted from witnesses during that trial.

Folks, this is really bad stuff. But as bad as it is, I have not seen any mention of it in the mainstream media.

For years police have had the ability to make up anything they want in describing an encounter with the public, and make it stick.  Video has become the public’s best accountability tool.  Of course this had to be in Maryland, where police argue that taking video of them is illegal.  It should be illegal not to.