imported post
XtremeDuty.45 wrote:
fighting for our rights and going out looking to get into trouble to prove a point are two different things! How about getting people together who have been harassed and having them write statements about their experience and send it to the Chief of Police or the Mayor? Doing stuff like this is just stooping to their level. There is no need for it.
Proud member of: VFW, American Legion, AMVETS, KofC, NRA and North American Hunting Club.
WE MUST FIGHT FOR OUR RIGHTS!!! (in a sensible way....hope that is enough clarification for you!)
Strongly disagree.
Personally, I think writing statements about their experience is usually useless. I am all for doing whatever works. Unless you have a lot of citizens making similar complaints against the same cop(s), it's easy for your complaint to be dismissed because many people make bogus complaints. Making bogus claims is a very easy, very common scam.
How does the Chief or the Mayor know that YOUR complaint is any different? What if your Police Chief or your Mayor is part of the problem?
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video has to be worth a million. Even after being confronted with the videotape of Sgt. James Kuehnlein, Police Chief Uhrig failed to fire him. Chief Uhrig questioned Darrow's motives for having made the tape, probably to cast suspicion on Darrow. This is a standard tactic of police apologists - discredit/blame the victim.
Sgt. Kuehnlein threated to trump up charges against Darrow! So how effective do you really think it would have been for Darrow to "write a statement" to Chief Uhrig? It would have been Darrow's word against Kuehnlein's. I assert to you that writing a statement would have been
utterly futile.
There's all kinds of cop apologists on the Internet claiming that Darrow 'set up' the police. Well, so what? It doesn't change the fact that
Sgt. James Kuehnlein threatened Darrow with trumped-up charges! If Sgt. Kuehnlein had been professional and done his job properly, there wouldn't have been anything to 'set up', and we wouldn't be having this discussion. There are cops (and plenty of other folks as well) out there who seriously need to be caught on camera. Sgt. Kuehnlein was clearly one of them, especially since something happened to the tapefrom his cruiser.
It wasn't until after the video made the rounds on the Internet and there was a major public outcry that the Board of Aldermen fired Sgt. Kuehnlein. I don't know about you, but as far as I'm concerned,
any cop caught threatening to trump up charges against a citizen needs to be fired immediately and prevented from working in law enforcement ever again. There are some things you just don't do. Oh, and the videofootageof that incident from the police 'couldn't be accounted for'. That should also be a fireable offense - tampering with evidence. Why wasn't Kuehnlein held accountable for the tape from his cruiser?
Sometime in the not-too-distant future the videotapes will hopefully be replaced with solid-state hard drives that cannot be removed without special tools and the police won't be able to 'disappear' the video record. Hopefully the technology will also allow real-time streaming front and rear view video back to headquarters and to a civilian review boardfrom each cruiser.
I've done a lot of reading about the Darrow case, and there's many different people saying that St. George, Missouri is nothing but a ticket trap, and that the police there have a horrible reputation (Police Chief Uhrig was himself dismissed later for allegedly trying to force himself on a 17-year old girl). I'm really glad I don't live there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._George,_Missouri
http://www.beloblog.com/KMOV_Blogs/n4idailybriefing/2007/09/first_a_seregant_now_the_chief.html
http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2007/09/who-is-supervising-supervisor.html
http://drx.typepad.com/psychotherapyblog/2007/09/brett-darrow-me.html
http://www.officer.com/web/online/Top-News-Stories/Missouri-Caught-on-Tape-Case-Draws-Controversy/1$37868
http://www.tupelovoice.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=19&id=7695&catid=6&func=fb_pdf
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A check of court records shows Kuehnlein himself pleaded guilty of assault and stealing in two different cases, in 1988 and 1990. He successfully petitioned a judge in St. Louis County in 1998 to expunge his criminal record, which was making it hard for him to get work as a cop." - I think the judge who did this showed very poor judgement, and should be fired also.
OK, now I'm going to very carefully climb back down off my soapbox. (Robocop voice) "Thank you for your cooperation!"
PS. I'm not sick of Darrow.