Police admit planting evidence

Police admit planting evidence
Huntington Beach chief says officers routinely employ tactic with civilian vehicles as part of training exercises.
By JENNIFER MUIR
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

HUNTINGTON BEACH – A Huntington Beach police officer's exoneration for planting a loaded gun in a suspect's car has led to the revelation that police routinely plant evidence in unsuspecting civilians' vehicles for training exercises.

Chief Kenneth Small said Friday that police plant contraband – including unloaded weapons, fake drugs and drug paraphernalia – in suspects' vehicles after they're arrested as a method of training new officers in searches.

The training practice came to light Friday after a Huntington Beach man said he learned that an officer who planted a handgun in his car during a traffic stop was exonerated of wrongdoing. Thomas Cox, who was later convicted of traffic and drug violations, said he watched in horror as another officer found the gun in the trunk of his Hyundai, igniting laughter among officers.

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1371805.php

Seems doing ANYTHING to cars of any suspects would be evidence tampering.

thanks for the article

'Chief Kenneth Small said Friday that police plant contraband – including unloaded weapons, fake drugs and drug paraphernalia – in suspects' vehicles after they're arrested as a method of training new officers in searches.'

That's illegal Chief Immoral Smallfry.

I wouldn't be surprised if the routine is to plant the evidence to get the "suspect" up on stronger charges, knowing that the defendant won't have the ability to challenge it if they don't specifically see the planting. You'd have a cop on one hand saying he found it in the vehicle, and all the defendant could say is, "I don't know how that got in there, but it's not mine."

But if the cop's caught doing it, they just say it's part of a "training exercise." See, we were just playing around; we wouldn't have let you go to jail because of that, honest!

I'm surprised we haven't seen posts supporting this sort of behavior yet. No matter how far out of bounds or control some LE becomes, there are those who excuse their actions and dismiss any criticism.

but i have to say i agree. especially with drugs. i know someone who was arrested with planted drugs several years ago, and drugs don't have serial numbers.

who was stopped on the pretext of an illegal lane change. He is adamant that he signaled the lane change. No matter. He has a baby face and is short and was driving an expensive vehicle. He refused to consent to a vehicle search. The drug dog was conveniently unavailable. He waited outside his vehicle on the side of the road with the officer who had ticketed him for nearly six hours. Finally, a drug dog was brought to the scene. It did not alert and he was allowed to leave. About two weeks later the cop that stopped him was caught planting drugs in another vehicle whose owner had consented to a voluntary search.

...I read recently that major players in the Ramparts "scandal"* of a few years ago had been caught stealing coke from the evidence locker prior to that. Not a nose full but pounds if I recall right. They remained on the force and went on to commit more serious crimes. If a black teenager was caught with just an empty crack pipe he would be doing hard time and tarred for life. One notorious CHP officer here stopped a truck and confiscated an ounce of speed for his own use. He took it from undercover cops on their way to a sting and was busted. Rather than doing time for the crime he was assigned to manning the weigh station or something. Some local kid sharing a roach here would be in court and run through the mill for "distributing" marijuana or one of the other myriad of charges invented to circumvent de-criminalization laws.

* I put scandal in quotes because it suggests that it is an exception to normal activity.

It seems that if they don't have probable cause to search your car, then they shouldn't ask, but apparently they ask anyways and sometimes make up their own probable cause. What really constitutes as "probable cause?"

It seems that the smartest thing to do is not let the officer search your car, and even wait for a while to make sure your stuff is secure from being tampered with. But are there ways they can force doing a search of the car(making up "probably cause," etc)?

If you are black or poor and the cop has nothing pressing to do (the donut shop is closed) you will be asked if it's ok to search your car.

My lawyer advises; "Think of yourself as a prisoner of war....name, rank and serial number only anything else, call a lawyer and NO SEARCHES". I think he's right.

On edit. To try to answer your question. Probable cause is more than a suspicion a crime has been committed but not actual evidence. For instance you are pulled over for a tail light malfunction, everything else is in order and you haven't done anything wrong but the cop just doesn't like your looks....no probable cause so he cannot legally search. But lets say he sees you closing the glove box as he approaches the car hmmmm still no probable cause UNLESS he saw you put a gun in there, now he has probable cause. Let say he searches (just cause he doesn't like you) and finds a bag of grass. Do you think it would be hard for him to say he saw it in the glove box when you got your owner's card or saw you pick it up and jamb it in there when he approached the car? Who is the jury/judge going to believe? Cops lie on the witness stand all the time, it's just simply routine and any lawyer or judge who says that I'm wrong is lying, they know it happens all the time.

even if you KNOW you are clean, DO NOT consent! if you do, you throw away any chance of appealing a conviction, even if the evidence was planted. it's especially important for "straight" people to refuse searches. we ALL need to refuse.

if I am not mistaken you have to allow a search at a border checkpoint. Otherwise, no search.

says to not ever consent to a search of your vehicle.

Cops are crooks very often.

to uphold the laws and protect the citizens.

I realize that society needs police officers but California is rapidly becoming a police state. One way to temper that would be to have officers of the court, police, prison guards, district attornies and judges subject to the death penalty for corruption charges or felonies committed while they are active in their offices.

Maybe that would slow these guys down.

society in general.

what I do believe is that police breaking their oath and betraying the public who they are paid to protect should be cause to enforce high to maximum penalties for the crimes they commit.

'next door' to Huntington for 40 years. The HB cops have been known to be - how shall I say - out of control, for all those years. Seems like nothing new to those of us around here. Lawsuits don't seem to work either. Any suggestions?

..even San Diego is bluer than Orange County! Of course, once you go east in our state, all blue disappears completely!

this is so despicable. this country has gone to the dogs.

I highly recommend giving support to Copwatch and the ACLU who have leveled their very limited resources at these issues with good results though it is a David and Goliath situation. It is routine practice everywhere for police to plant evidence to strengthen cases against suspects (or people you just don't like the looks of or shall we say that "fit the profile")in an "end justifies the means" mentality that opens the door to a personal financial gain and other criminal activity by police who enjoy a level of unaccountability that seems to be just the opposite of that required for people who carry instant death on their belts and have the power to otherwise destroy lives very easily. We have had killings of people by very belligerent police here in Humboldt County, California recently that have helped to achieve a critical mass of support in seeking reform in the "justice system".

http://www.copwatch.com">Cop Watch


http://www.aclu.org/police/">ACLU

I have just started a web site for the local group that is seeking to establish civilian police review boards against very strong opposition from police agencies and local pot and drug producers of which their are many. The city of Berkeley has had one for a number of years with good results but now the BPA, Berkeley Police Association is trying to get it banned so they can go back to the system of un-accountability known as "investigating themselves". http://www.coalitionforpolicereview.info/">our site is just getting started so there is not a lot there yet.

Accountability is totally lacking in our police agencies and in the courts that routinely rubber stamp their allegations against suspects. Suspects without the ability to defend themselves constitute the vast majority of the body count while professional criminals run free, run for office and donate to the different police associations. I have known a lot of pot growers here in many sport DARE stickers and Sheriff's association stickers on the vehicles they do their business with. They also advocate keeping pot illegal I might add. One judge told a jury I was on to "place more weight on the testimony of the police officer than on the drunk driver as the officer was a trained professional". My brother was forced off of the Montgomery county Maryland police for not being a racist thirty some years ago and these practices are an entrenched tradition everywhere in America.

:)

well being.

Nonsense. Cops are not your friends. Never trust them to do 'what's right' - ever.

The same pig that refused to investigate my uncle's murder (he was 'just a poor, old drunk"), was later nailed for stealing thousands of dollars from crime scenes.

The cops response:

OH jeebus...

They made a mistake and owned up to it. Y'all really reaching now. Let me qualify by saying I do think the officers involved deserve some kind in-house punishiment- like some days off or remedial training. But it was nothing criminal.



So, its nothing criminal when its a cop violating a persons private property as long as they are doing it for so called training purposes. They have an excuse for everything!


Here's a link to the discussion for anyone who's interested,

http://bbs.freetalklive.com/index.php?topic=10169.0

Thanks for posting this. It confirms everything I know about cops (and having two cops and a rent-a-cop in my immediate family, I think I have at least a little insight into the minds of these people). People that want to be cops, should not be allowed to be cops. They tend to be arrogant, authoritarian, sanctimonious pricks.

Botched Paramilitary Police Raids:

An Epidemic of "Isolated Incidents"
"If a widespread pattern of violations were shown . . . there would be reason for grave concern."

 —Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, in Hudson v. Michigan, June 15, 2006.

An interactive map of botched SWAT and paramilitary police raids, released in conjunction with the Cato policy paper "Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids," by Radley Balko.

What does this map mean?

The proliferation of SWAT teams, police militarization, and the Drug War have given rise to a dramatic increase in the number of "no-knock" or "quick-knock" raids on suspected drug offenders. Because these raids are often conducted based on tips from notoriously unreliable confidential informants, police sometimes conduct SWAT-style raids on the wrong home, or on the homes of nonviolent, misdemeanor drug users. Such highly-volatile, overly confrontational tactics are bad enough when no one is hurt -- it's difficult to imagine the terror an innocent suspect or family faces when a SWAT team mistakenly breaks down their door in the middle of the night.

But even more disturbing are the number of times such "wrong door" raids unnecessarily lead to the injury or death of suspects, bystanders, and police officers. Defenders of SWAT teams and paramilitary tactics say such incidents are isolated and rare. The map below aims to refute that notion.

http://www.cato.org/raidmap/#

Thanks for the link, I felt this deserved a discussion of its own, we'll see if he or any other cops chime in on it. A lot of cops have been visiting the site lately because the host of the show Free Talk Live posted a question on their bbs (http://www.lawenforcementforums.com/forums/index.php) which got them all upset, they banned all members of the FTL bbs from their bbs before most of us could post anything, but everyone is welcome at FTL.

Here's the link for the new discussion,

http://bbs.freetalklive.com/index.php?topic=10187.0

quoting:
---
They didn't "plant" anything. Planting implies they put it there for the sole purpose of charging him with a crime. They accidently left it in the car.

But don't let that stop you from embracing the media's distorted perception.
---

Wow. Now it's "the media's" fault. :crazy: What a prickster.

If you would be so kind, please ask this lower-than-whaleshit ratfucker how many years he thinks someone should serve in prison due to evidence "accidently left" on a suspect's property as part of a "training exercise", and what, if any, recourse the wrongfully-convicted should have under those circumstances.

The War on Drugs needs to end now. It's futile and by it's very nature it breeds these kinds of abuses.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

First and foremost, the Police Department defines the word, "PIG". Thus as a hippie in the making, up the establishment, dope smoking young punk, I did have a few encounters with the HBPD!

Second, what Huntington Beach (a.k.a. Bunkington Bitch) is today and when I grew-up there are two different things. Growing up there was a bedroom community in the making and lots of open parties with garage bands on the weekend. Now you still have the affluent Huntington Harbor, million dollar homes here and there, a mostly middle class that works in some other part of the county or even in Los Angeles Vicinity to the Slater Slums which now stretches from Warner Avenue, pass Slater all of the way down to Yorktown one city block west of Beach Blvd. and all parts are very crowded.

Now most of the cities of Orange County do have their own police departments, some areas do use the Orange County Sheriff and as with most cops they seem to stick their big unwanted shout into your business. Now some of these Policemen do good things for their community, but there are those few who are complete assholes, then there are those who should become unemployed very quickly. In Huntington Beach have two unique qualities about the police department, 1) A fleet of helicopters (two in the air at all times) serving Huntington Beach and neighboring communities who pay for the service, 2) Policemen who are assholes or worst (not all, but better than 90%). Something one needs to remember and that is a business or a department in this case is only a reflection of its managers. Huntington Beach police excel at being hostile to the citizens it serves. Huntington Beach was the first to have paramilitary tactics implemented in the training of the force for one of those days we may need it or to break-up that rock concert on the beach before it gets to late.

Huntington Beach is not the only city to have cop problems, Newport Beach also has a bad reputation (if not worse in certain situations) and they claim to do this on purpose to ward-off problems. I have only been arrested once, and that was in Huntington Beach (more on this latter). In Newport Beach two of my friends where arrested for being in a bar with live music talking to loud while I was with them. Their appearance was the reason they were busted (long hair, biker looking and my other friend and I had short hair, clean dressed), nothing more than a couple of rookie cops just trying rack-up some adda-boy points with a disorderly conduct arrest. A truly chicken-shit situation of profiling the wrong people which I had to watch first hand.

In Huntington Beach I was arrested with two other friends on New Years Day at 12:30 am in 1977 we were arrested for possession and driving under the influence. We were taken into local city jail and proceeded to be process. Every was going O.K. I guess until the arresting officer found my ACLU membership card and that was when all hell broke lose and nearly got my ass kicked. A sargent came out to stop a group of cops hurting me real bad, but started to accuse me of being a plant (paranoid I guess). The short story is all charges were dropped, but this group of people wanted beat the shit out of 17 year old kid for a belonging to a group that supports people rights.

do they then still claim it is an exercise?

This sounds so much like the thwarted 1999 bombing in Ryazan, Russia: officials first claimed they had prevented a terrorist attack, only to change their claim three days later when it turned out the perps were FSB (KGB) agents.

Disbelief
http://www.disbelief-film.com/indexDE.htm
A feature-long documentary about the mysterious bombings of apartment buildings in Moscow in september 1999.
...
What gave this human tragedy a particularly eerie cast was that no one was remotely interested in taking credit for it, unlike most terrorist attacks. I wasn't convinced that it was the Chechens. There were hardened fighters among the Chechens; there were hostage-takers. But this somehow felt different. And then came Ryazan: the terrorists hunted by the police turned out to be FSB agents.
...

Glad to see this is finally coming out. Too bad it won't bring back Louima. For openers.

Lawnorda! Lawnorda! Lawnorda!

"We can't leave Democracy to the people in the streets."--Spiro Agnew, 1968

:freak:
dbt
Remember New Orleans