|
|
|
| NEWS > 10 March 2010 |
Other related articles:
UK: Met police chief 'bugged A
Britain's most senior police officer of Asian origin was illegally bugged and put under surveillance on the orders of the Metropolitan police chief, leaked Scotland Yard documents have revealed.
According to the papers, over 300 telephone calls of Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur were tapped in an elaborate operation overseen directly by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, 'The Daily Telegraph' reported. Ghaffur was also photographed at more than 30 meetings with another officer at restaurants and cafes in London in the operation codenamed 'Helios'.
The "b... Read more
|
 Article sourced from
|
|
The Associated Press
10 March 2010
This article appeared in the above title/site.
To view it in its entirity click this link.
|
Providence Police Department,
|
Drug arrests latest black mark
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — After three Providence police officers were arrested last week in a cocaine-peddling sting, Chief Dean Esserman called it a "hard day" for the department.
The department has endured its share of hard days in recent years despite Esserman's vows in 2003 to reform the conduct of a department marred by a cheating scandal and other problems under the administration of ex-Mayor Vincent "Buddy" Cianci.
One officer faces a trial on charges of raping a woman at a police substation, another was indicted last month for allegedly beating a man with a flashlight and a federal judge lambasted the department for shoddy police work that forced prosecutors in 2007 to drop charges against a suspected drug dealer who was arrested in last week's bust.
The latest arrests, involving a narcotics detective, a school resource officer, and a former driver for Mayor David Cicilline, have triggered a widening investigation in the narcotics unit and raised fresh questions about the police force in Rhode Island's capital.
"There's no question that when you have groups of police officers involved with drug dealing, that's about as serious an image problem as a police department can have," said Eugene O'Donnell, a former New York police officer who teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
City officials have tried to mitigate the damage, suspending the arrested officers and calling them rogue. Four additional officers were placed on desk duty last week. Cicilline proposed random drug testing of police officers, then backed off Wednesday and urged the department to develop its own policy.
"All of us need to rebuild any trust that has been violated by an officer, whether working in a school, working in a neighborhood, working anywhere," Esserman said Monday.
Allegations of police misconduct against even a few officers risks detracting from the professionialism of the majority, said Michael Brady, the former president of the Rhode Island Police Chiefs Association.
"I think it taints law enforcement all over the place," he said.
The arrests have embarrassed the department so much so that Cianci, who was convicted in 2002 of running City Hall as a criminal enterprise, has rubbed it in on his radio talk show by playing snippets of Eric Clapton's version of "Cocaine."
Esserman, a Dartmouth College graduate and protege of former New York and Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, vowed to overcome the department's scandal-pocked past when he arrived in 2003, saying, "I don't want this department to be one that betrays you anymore."
A year earlier, former Police Chief Urbano Prignano testified under immunity at Cianci's corruption trial that he had helped officers on promotional exams by supplying cheat sheets.
Since then, Esserman has taken credit for reducing crime and encouraging community policing. A day before the arrests, he was in Washington testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about his department's accomplishments. Cicilline defended the department Wednesday as a national model and said the days of cheating and paying for promotions are done.
"I will do everything I can to protect the reputation and integrity of the great men and women who do this work every day," he said.
But new problems have arisen.
One officer pleaded not guilty to assault last month after he was caught on camera allegedly beating a suspect with a flashlight. Another could stand trial as soon as Monday on charges he raped a woman in a police substation three years ago.
In 2007, police detective Scott Patridge told a federal judge he did not have notes from his investigation into a drug dealing suspect, Khalid Mason, but then later said he found them in his attic just before the trial was to start. U.S. District Judge William Smith said the episode exposed practices that "threaten both the fundamental integrity of the investigations conducted by the Providence Police and, unavoidably, the public's faith in the department's competency."
The botched case returned Mason to the streets.
Last week, Mason was among six people arrested after a four-month investigation into a drug ring that also netted three officers — Patrolman Robert Hamlin, Sgt. Stephen Gonsalves, Cicilline's former driver, and Detective Joseph Colanduono, who served on a Drug Enforcement Administration task force.
Authorities say Hamlin tipped his brother, an alleged drug dealer, to the narcotics detectives' identities. A state police affidavit recounts a recorded conversation purportedly between Gonsalves and Colanduolo that authorities say show the two men scheming to buy drugs from a dealer.
A lawyer for Gonsalves, who has been released on personal recognizance, says his client appears to have had only a minor role. Colanduono's lawyer did not return calls seeking comment, and it was not clear if Hamlin had a lawyer. Both officers are being held without bail.
The investigation could have ripple effects. State prosecutors say they'll review pending cases in which one of the accused officers is a witness. The public defender has also asked his staff to check their files for the officers' involvement.
The latest arrests fit a common pattern of police officers and suspected drug dealers cultivating chummy relationships for suspicious reasons, O'Donnell said. Not only can it help dealers avoid arrest, but if caught, they can snitch on officers who protected them and become valuable prosecution witnesses.
"Corrupting the police is a core strategy of their enterprise," he said. "It's actually having the cops at your beck and call, getting them to give you information, running cover for you."
|
| |
 EiP Comments:
|
|---|
|
| |
* We have no wish to infringe the copyright of any newspaper or periodical. If you feel that we have done so then please contact us with the details and we will remove the article. The articles republished on this site are provided for the purposes of research , private study, criticism , review, and the reporting of current events' We have no wish to infringe the copyright of any newspaper , periodical or other works. If you feel that we have done so then please contact us with the details and where necessary we will remove the work concerned.
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
 |
Ethics in Policing, based in the UK, provide information and advice about the following:
Policing Research | Police News articles | Police Corruption | International Policing | Police Web Sites | Police Forum | Policing Ethics | Police Journals | Police Publications |
|
| |
|
