Officer Roid Rage: New Jersey tax victims footed the bill for this poser's hormonal enhancements.
"What happens when you lay off nearly half of the police in one of the most dangerous cities in America?" begins a recent account of personnel cutbacks by the municipal government of Camden, New Jersey.
My guess would be this: The crime rate -- as experienced by the affected public, rather than measured by the local government -- will go down, and the public appetite will be whetted for further personnel cuts. This is because the Camden Police Department -- which has laid off 167 of its 360 officers -- has long been a major source of crime, rather than a deterrent to the same.
New Jersey is one of the wealthiest states in the soyuz, but it is also afflicted with a large and immensely powerful population of unionized tax feeders.
On January 19, a New Jersey Superior Court Judge refused to grant an injunction sought by the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) to reinstate the 167 officers who were laid off by Camden. On the same day, the union rejected a proposed compromise that would have reinstated 100 officers to the force. The deal would involve three days a month of unpaid furloughs for patrol officers for six months, followed by one unpaid monthly furlough day for the following year.
This arrangement would amount to a modest pay cut, but it shattered against the FOP's impregnable sense of privilege. As commentator George Berkin pointed out, the union had erroneously assumed that it could "get a court to trump economics" -- or, at least, that it could browbeat Camden City Hall into devising some way to extract wealth from the productive on its behalf. The police unions have become accustomed to getting whatever they want. For example: In New Jersey, it's become standard practice for police to use their tax-funded health plans to pay for illegal steroid treatments.
Camden County is among the state's poorest subdivisions, with an official (which is to say, understated) unemployment rate of 16.3 percent, a per capita income of about $23,300, and a median annual household income of roughly $48,000. Its municipal government confronts a $26.5 million budget shortfall.
The average Camden police officer receives $144,000 in salary and benefits, most of it paid for by taxpayers elsewhere in the state. Since 2003, Camden has been under the fiscal supervision of Trenton, which provides more than 80 percent of the city's operating budget. Over the past seven years the state government has lavished nearly a quarter of a billion dollars on Camden in the name of "economic revitalization" and "transitional" funding.
Five year before Trenton assumed responsibility for Camden's finances, the state took control of the Camden Police Department following the resignation of Police Chief William Hill. This left the department "without a person clearly in charge" in the midst of a wide-ranging corruption probe.
At the time of Chief Hill's resignation, a federal grand jury was investigating allegations that a clique of corrupt Camden police officers had operated a shakedown racket targeting local cocaine dealers, thereby helping the market prosper in exchange for a cut of the proceeds. One of the first results of that inquiry was an increased attrition rate for the Camden PD as about one-ninth of its force of about 460 officers suddenly retired, claimed their pensions, and -- perhaps most importantly -- sealed their personnel files.
Camden County Prosecutor Lee Solomon negotiated an agreement with the president of the local police union, Detective Dan Morris, permitting the investigation to have access to personnel records of officers -- both active and retired -- who served on the force from 1997 on. "The prosecutor has assured the FOP [Fraternal Order of Police] the confidentiality of these files will not be compromised," Morris announced in 2000.
Camden Mayor Dana Redd (c.) and Police Chief Scott Thompson (r.).
Morris had access to those files as well, and there's reason to believe that he gleaned critical intelligence from them -- which he used to create his own little protection racket, which he operated for several years before retiring on disability last January at the age of 46.
Last September, Morris pleaded guilty to multiple charges outlined in a multi-count federal indictment. As commander of a five-officer Special Operations unit, Morris committed numerous criminal offenses, including illegal searches and seizures of property, theft, extortion, perjury, and various kinds of assault.
The federal indictment against Morris's subordinates describes their Special Operations unit as a criminal conspiracy that planted evidence to justify false arrests, routinely lied about the quantity of narcotics seized in raids in order to "expose the arrestees to greater penalties," regularly bartered drugs for sundry favors, and made a habit of stealing money and drugs. Public exposure of the crimes committed by Morris and his little street gang led to the dismissal of 185 drug cases, and the release of dozens of people who had been wrongfully imprisoned.
In April 2007, Benjamin Daye -- who was 20 at the time --was stopped and assaulted by Morris and his goon squad. An illegal search of Daye's car failed to turn up any contraband and the terrified young man couldn't provide any information on local dealers -- so the police planted drugs in the car and arrested Daye, who served nearly three years in prison before the case was dropped.
Joel Barnes, who spent nearly a year and a half behind bars, had a very similar experience. Two officers with the Special Operations unit, Robert Bayard and Antonio Figueroa, invaded Barnes's home, demanding to know "where the s**t is at." When Barnes truthfully replied that there were no illegal drugs on the premises, one of them pulled a small bag of cocaine from his own pockets and told Barnes, "Tell us where the s**t [is] at and we'll make this disappear." When Barnes repeated that he didn't have any drugs, the officers charged him with unlawful possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute in a "school zone" -- a charge that could have led to a 20-year prison sentence.
"I felt helpless and didn't know what to do," Barnes recalls. "I knew I hadn't done anything wrong, but I also knew that the officers had all of the power and I had none."
Morris and his Special Operations squad are generally referred to as a "rogue" unit, implying that their criminal conduct was anomalous. Given the pervasive corruption of the Camden PD, the term "rogue" would more properly be applied to Rolan Carter. In 2008, Carter was fired from the force for "insubordination" as a result of an incident in which he attempted to arrest a man wanted on four outstanding warrants.
Carter pulled the man over for using a cell phone while driving. As he ran a background check two plainclothes officers materialized and insisted that the driver was a police informant and should be released immediately. While Carter discussed the matter with the plainclothes cops, a police sergeant arrived and ordered him to let the driver go. Still unconvinced that this was the "proper procedure," Carter called his own command sergeant, who instructed him to do as the other officers demanded.
Not a "team player": Fired cop Rolan Carter.
Six weeks later, Carter -- who had received multiple commendations for valor -- was charged with insubordination and cashiered from the force. But his problems had actually begun more than a year earlier.
Carter didn't lose his job because of personnel cut-backs; he was fired because he displayed symptoms of personal integrity. And his lawsuit against the Camden PD is one of at least ten filed by former officers describing "a department rife with cronyism" in which "commanders create a hostile and discriminatory atmosphere and seek retaliation against those perceived as defiant," observes the Inquirer.
In addition to the lawsuits filed by former Camden police officers, the city is dealing with up to thirty active or potential lawsuits by victims of the Morris-led criminal syndicate -- with dozens more likely to come. It is possible that Camden's municipal government will soon suffer the same fate that befell the one in charge of Maywood, California.
Buried beneath a deluge of civil rights lawsuits and settlement costs incurred by police misconduct, Maywood lost its liability insurance coverage and had to contract with a neighboring town for basic municipal services. As it happens, that neighboring town was Bell, California -- which, it was discovered, had an even more extravagantly corrupt municipal government. I suspect that entertaining little revelations of this kind -- in California, New Jersey, and all points in between -- will abound as the economic collapse accelerates.
The Camden PD, following the example of law enforcement agencies in cash-strapped California cities such as Oakland and Sacramento, has announced that it will be rationing its services by refusing to deal with "minor" matters, such as non-injury vehicle accidents and petty theft. This announcement is intended to inspire public fear. It may have exactly the opposite effect.
Helene Pierson, executive director of Heart of Camden, a neighborhood development corporation, recalls that when her group was created several years ago it intended to be a "partner" with the police force. She and others "bought into the [idea] that police are stretched really thin, that they try really hard, that they need extra help." Much of what she has seen -- including dozens of cases in which people were falsely imprisoned in the service of a criminal racket run by the cops -- has disabused Pierson of such notions.
In Camden -- and, for that matter, everywhere else -- the government police force has been a catalyst for crime, rather than a deterrent to it. There's every reason to believe that fewer snouts in the trough would mean less crime on the streets.
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Uniformed thug as "political prisoner": Maricopa County Deputy Sheriff Adam Stoddard strikes a martyr's pose for the camera after a few days in "jail." Stoddard was found in contempt after stealing a document from the table of a defense attorney during a court hearing.
To his comrades in the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (MCSO), Adam Stoddard is a martyr to principle and an innocent victim of injustice -- a heroic figure unjustly consigned to prison by petty, power-hungry figures. His boss, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, went so far as to describe Stoddard as a "political prisoner" during his brief and uncommonly comfortable incarceration.
All of this, predictably enough, is nothing but several acres of stockyard carpeting.
Stoddard, a member of the MCSO's correctional unit, was videotaped stealing a document from the desk of a defense attorney. As a result he spent several days in the custody of his co-workers after being cited for contempt of court by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe for refusing to apologize for his offense.
It's important to recognize that Stoddard -- unlike many others who have been cited for contempt -- actually committed an offense against an individual's rights.
***
*** Stoddard claimed to have seen something on the handwritten documents that constituted a threat to “court security" -- some cryptic conjunction of the words "going to" "steal" and "money," which apparently weren't part of the same sentence.
In addition to his unusual ability to divine the concealed intentions of criminal defendants from words randomly scattered across a page of notes hand-written by somebody else, Deputy Stoddard apparently possesses some form of X-ray vision, since the document he stole was concealed by several on top of it.
Obviously, Stoddard is no ordinary deputy; he must be the Last Son of Krypton, concealing his true identity in the guise of a mild-mannered bailiff.
In his ruling he correctly observed that Stoddard's actions were "unreasonable and unlawful" and resulted in a breach of attorney-client privilege, and that Stoddard's facially ridiculous explanation -- which implicitly accused defense counsel Joanne Cuccia of collaboration in a crime -- injured the attorney's professional reputation.
Had a mere mundane committed an offense similar to Stoddard's, the penalty would have involved some combination of a fine and mandatory jail time. However, Judge Donahoe --perhaps mindful of the need to maintain cordial relations with the brown-shirted paladins of public order who carry out his decrees -- didn’t send Stoddard immediately to jail, or slap him with a fine. Instead, he ordered Stoddard to apologize, in public, to defense attorney Cuccia.
While there were problems with this proposed compromise, it would have spared Stoddard from spending time behind bars by treating his offense as a mistake, rather than a crime.One could round down to "never" the frequency that common people are offered such consideration by the courts.
But Stoddard's actions weren't a mistake. They were the predictable product of the institutional culture of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office. Under the reign of the oleaginous proto-fascist Joe Arpaio, the MCSO has mutated into a lawless armed clique suitable to a third world dictatorship. Indeed, Arpaio and his minions -- including a contingent called the "Special Enforcement Unit" -- have conducted late-night or early-morning raids to intimidate and imprison people who have criticized the Dear Leader.
With the support of his Dear Leader -- who insisted that his deputies only follow his orders, not those of a mere judge --Stoddard defied the court order, telling a press conferece that he wouldn’t apologize “for doing my job,” and that saying he is sorry would be a “lie.”
In this case, of course, Stoddard had neither facts nor the law on his side -- just a sense of limitless privilege and a petulant frustration that Judge Donahoe refused to accept his puerile fictions.Following his Drama Queen turn in front of the press, Stoddard checked in to the Maricopa County Jail system.
With a finely tuned sense of self-promotion and unhindered by even a rudimentary sense of decency, Arpaio has used his jail system to build a reputation as "America's Toughest Sheriff" by subjecting those incarcerated therein -- most of whom have never been convicted of an actual offense -- to a steady stream of petty indignities.
Male prisoners are required to wear pink underwear; until a lawsuit ended the practice, female detainees were under constant video surveillance, including hidden cameras in the toilet facilities. Inmates are fed green bologna and forced to work in chain gangs. Many are housed in surplus military tents that offer little effective shelter from the elements. After several people charged with non-violent offenses died of culpable abuse or neglect while in Arpaio's custody, the county was forced to pay millions of dollars in legal settlements.
As one of Arpaio's brown-shirted cadres, Adam Stoddard endured none of those indignities. Citing supposed "security" concerns -- "security" being the familiar, all-purpose defense of dictators everywhere -- Arpaio refused to say exactly where Stoddard was being held. If he actually spent time behind bars it was most likely as a guest in a special, detainee-friendly facility referred to as the “Mesa Hilton." Another possibility is that Stoddard simply enjoyed a paid vacation under "house arrest" or in similarly comfortable circumstances.
To hear Stoddard's brown-shirted comrades tell the story, however, the deputy was the a modern Sir Walter Raleigh, unjustly immured in the Tower of London awaiting his grim appointment with the Headsman. Accordingly, on the morning after Stoddard was taken to "jail," twenty intrepid, public-spirited MCSO deputies suddenly called in “sick," thereby throwing the Superior Court into disarray.
This illegal work stoppage (assuming we can torture the word "work" into describing what the MSCO does) amounted to a criminal conspiracy against the rights of those whose legal hearings were delayed. The bomb threats and pepper spray attack would be investigated as acts of terrorism had they been carried out by common citizens in support of a detainee. But the police union thugs who demanded that Stoddard be released from jail and have his record cleared acted in the serene confidence that they confronted neither personal nor professional consequences.
Tax-feeder tantrum: Maricopa County deputies stage a rally on behalf of their comrade Adam "Sticky-Fingers" Stoddard.
Maricopa County Deputy Sean Pearce, speaking on behalf of the Deputies Law Enforcement Association, didn’t flinch from describing the "sick-out" as a show of support for Stoddard: “I think it sends out a message that this officer has integrity,” Pearce insisted. “Why should he apologize for doing his job?”
The “job” in question, as defined by Pearce and his colleagues, includes stealing proprietary information, violating attorney-client confidentiality, lying about one’s actions, and defying an order to make restitution to the victim.
But Deputy Stoddard is one of the sacred personages who wear a government-issued costume and is invested with the supposed authority to kill other human beings. It’s just not right for members of that privileged elite to be treated like mere mundanes. Hence the collective tantrum thrown by Stoddard’s fellow tax-feeders -- and a serious escalation in Arpaio's unprecedented war on his critics.
As the Los Angeles Times summarizes:
"[Arpaio] recently filed a racketeering lawsuit against the entire Maricopa County power structure.... Last year, when Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon called for a federal investigation of Arpaio's immigration enforcement, the Sheriff's Office demanded to see Gordon's e-mails, phone logs and appointment calendars. When the police chief in one suburb complained about the [immigration] sweeps [carried out by Arpaio's office], Arpaio's deputies raided that town's City Hall. [There have been] two dozen instances of the sheriff launching investigations of critics, none of which led to convictions. The most notorious case involves county Supervisor Don Stapley, a Republican who has sometimes disagreed with Arpaio's immigration tactics. Last December, deputies arrested Stapley on charges of failing to disclose business interests properly on his statement of economic interest."
In filing that charge against Stapley, Arpaio -- motes-and-beams fashion -- was using the power of his office to misdirect attention from his own misrepresentations in financial disclosure reports, which -- if he and Stapley were treated alike -- would result in more than a dozen criminal counts against the sheriff.
Instead of facing an investigation for his own irregularities, Arpaio -- with the aid of the similarly megalomaniacal Maricopa County prosecutor, Andrew Thomas -- attempted to prosecute and imprison the people who had brought those irregularities to light: The reporters and editorial staff of the independent Phoenix New Times newspaper.
In August 2007, the Maricopa County Prosecutor's Office hit the Phoenix New Times with a grand jury subpoena demanding detailed information, including "Every note, tape, and record from every story written about Sheriff Arpaio by every reporter over a period of years" as well as "detailed information on anyone who has looked at the New Times Web site since 2004" as well as every individual "individual who looked at any story, review, listing, classified, or retail ad [in the publication] over a period of years."
The pretext for that act of official harassment was that the New Times, in investigating Arpaio's conflicts of interest regarding ownership of commercial properties, had violated state law by disclosing the valiant sheriff's home address.
Chillin' with his homeboys: Sheriff Joe poses for a photo-op with neo-Nazi agitator Vito Lombardi.
Following Stoddard's "incarceration," Arpaio's Enemies List expanded to include Judge Gary Donahoe. County Prosecutor Thomas filed a criminal complaint against Donahoe accusing him of three felonies: Hindering prosecution, obstruction of a criminal investigation, and bribery. In a press conference called to elucidate the charges against Donahoe, Thomas found it impossible to describe a coherent theory of the case. But building a prosecutable case isn't the point in what is a transparent act of retaliation against the judge who sent one of Arpaio's Brownshirts to jail.
Arpaio and Thomas appear to believe -- or at least want the public to believe -- that they alone are untainted by the otherwise ubiquitous political corruption festering in Maricopa County. To that end they have filed a complaint against the entire County government under the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute, an action that effectively designates the board of county supervisors a criminal syndicate.
Arpaio is clearly willing to see the entire county government demolished, as long as he can erect a throne on the rubble.
"It's just extraordinary, the kind of thing that takes place in Third World dictatorships," observes former U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton, who is representing Donald Stapley. "So many people are of one mind on a single issue -- illegal immigration -- that they are willing to ignore [Arpaio's] misdeeds."
The face of "immigration enforcement" in Maricopa County: How would you like to see this guy busting down your door at the break of dawn?
Arpaio was actually seen by some as a liberal regarding illegal immigration prior to 2005. That year saw two critical changes: First, Arpaio re-cast himself as a crusader for border security, and second, he received a federal 287(g) waiver empowering his deputies to enforce federal immigration laws.
Earlier this year the federal government formally revoked the "authority" provided by the 287(g) waiver and instructed Arpaio that he could no longer use his personnel to enforce federal immigration laws.
The following day, Arpaio conducted one of his notorious "immigration sweeps," an exercise in which deputies "descend on heavily Latino neighborhoods, arrest hundreds of people for violations as minor as a busted headlight and ask them whether they are in the country legally," reported the Los Angeles Times.
"I wanted to show everybody it didn't make a difference," explained Arpaio -- quite redundantly, as it happened, for those who have come to understand that the superannuated dictator of Maricopa County answers only to himself.
A few years ago, in an essay that eventually cost me my job, I warned that the issue of illegal immigration was being exploited by the Regime to consolidate police state powers at both the federal and local levels. My colleagues at the time were of the opinion (candidly expressed by one of them in an e-mail) that it would be acceptable for the U.S. to become a police state within "secure" borders. I wasn't willing to settle for that arrangement, a microcosm of which is being created in Maricopa County under Arpaio.
But to paraphrase Edmund Burke, police-state methods, once tolerated, are soon institutionalized. What do we gain if every illegal immigrant is sent home -- and we end up living under a near-replica of the third world dictatorships those people had fled?
Joe Arpaio is the law enforcement equivalent of the geologic formation called a "terminal moraine" -- a huge mound of accreted debris piled up through the advance of a glacier. A core sample of Arpaio's decades-long long enforcement career would reveal layer upon layer of thuggish presumption, facile corruption, contempt for the Constitution, and indifference to any consideration other than his privileged status.
Arpaio is chiefly a problem for the county that has repeatedly voted him into office since 1992. But the tactics he is employing to retain his position might well engender mimicry in other counties as budgets tighten and political conflicts over dwindling tax revenues grow acute.
With the Feds pouring money and military equipment into "local" law enforcement departments nation-wide, Arpaio's literal war against Maricopa County's political leadership may eventually provide a template for similar putsches elsewhere.
I use the term "fascist" here not as a lazy pejorative, but in a specific sense. Arpaio is literally waging war on the rule of law on the assumption that he and his armed minions are the law in Maricopa County. The sloppy French kiss of a "news" item run in TNA promotes the notion that Arpaio must be a good guy, because leftists hate him so passionately -- a trope very closely related to the Dear Leader/Great Man school of authoritarian collectivism.
If The New American were still in the business of investigative journalism -- or critical opinion journalism of any kind -- they would have examined Arpaio's record just a little more carefully, rather than retailing his self-serving bromides. If they were committed to individual liberty protected by law, they would be joining Arpaio's critics, rather than carrying a banner in his torchlight parade.
"I have been a resident of Maricopa County since 1959, and a freedom activist since 1974. I have taken college instruction under MCSO [Maricopa County Sheriff's Office] senior management personnel. I have had superb personal assistance from MCSO officials [who] later were viciously destroyed for their decency and honor.
Simply put, Joe Arpaio is the worst nightmare for those ancestors who established the office of Sheriff as the top law enforcement official in a given county.
He has used his experience in federal law enforcement to create a private army, answerable to no one, egged on by every Nativist drone and `C-minus' LEO butt-licker in metropolitan Phoenix.
What these sub-genius folks don't yet realize is that he considers EVERY PERSON within his reach to be a "pre-arrested" criminal. His hubris is absolutely without limit, and is only matched by his contempt for human liberty and the constraints of a Constitutional Republic. None are safe from his gaze; not even his praetorian guard."
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