Drugs Who Gets Fired from the Force?
posted by on January 29 at 14:05 PM
Today’s PI examines how many local police officers accused of lying got fired. In short: Most didn’t, and some weren’t even investigated. In the five years prior to July 2007, only 13 officers in the study’s sample were booted from the force, but more than two-dozen kept their badges.
Among them, a Tacoma officer accused of falsifying sick-leave reports in 2004; a Federal Way officer who allegedly tried to cover up improperly throwing away drug evidence in 2002; and a King County sergeant accused of making “misleading statements” about her alleged pressuring of a subordinate regarding a public sex arrest case.
Apparently, accusations of making “misleading statements” and “throwing away” drugs is fine. Another officer got off with a slap on the wrist after allegedly leaving his firearm unattended, allowing someone to fire the gun. So what is a firing offense?
A Mountlake Terrace police officer, Jonathan Wender, has accused his department and the Snohomish County prosecutor’s office in a federal lawsuit of railroading him with a bogus dishonesty charge because he has favored the decriminalization of some drug use.Wender had been with the department for 15 years when he was terminated Oct. 19, 2005. His lawsuit says he had had no significant disciplinary issues.
“In Sgt. Wender’s case, a substantial reason this sanction was imposed and resulted in his termination was his advocacy of drug policy reform, speech that was disapproved of by the defendants but protected by the First Amendment,” the lawsuit said.
Wender was a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (L.E.A.P.). That may have ired the department’s brass, but it’s not against the rules because he was speaking on his own behalf. “They don’t like what he’s saying,” says Jack Cole, a former New Jersey undercover narcotics detective and director of L.E.A.P.
Wender’s official charge, according to the PI, was “failing to follow up on a citizen’s tip about a drug-growing operation.” But that sounds bogus. Officers in Snohomish County can’t possibly respond to every pot-garden tip —it’s considered the leading marijuana-producing county in our bud-basket of a state. But it makes for a plausible-sounding reason to can Wender. I called the Mountlake Police Department but they couldn’t verify the reason for his firing without a formal records request.
But we throw the Constitution out the window when drugs are involved. The same way Fourth Amendment protections from unreasonable searches are suspended when drugs are suspected, this officer’s First Amendment right to speak on his own behalf was cast aside. “For one, police departments in the U.S. average about 20 percent of their funding from the war on drugs,” says Cole. “If you’re a police administrator, it’s not good to have your working members speaking against it.”
Yet more collateral damage from the War on Drugs that we lose more money and people over.
And for what? So elites can be hypocritical as they drug themselves with meds and fly high on coke?
(on a personal level, I find most drugs boring ...)
I'd imagine so many people that get popped accuse the arresting officers of lying, planting drugs on them, whatever it takes to get out of a sentence.
say what you want, Do, but being accused of making “misleading statements” is a big deal when it's the difference between a conviction and a dropped charge. cops are called liars when they tell the truth. but cops are called liars when they just know the person is guilty even if they don't quite have the evidence.
great report. and while sure, i'm bummed at what they fire someone over, i find it more upsetting that "misleading statements" are in the that's fine category.
Dominic's assumption here is that accusation=guilt. I'm pretty sure he'd object loudly to that assumption being made of anyone other than police.
You're absolutely right, lostboy. I'd object if it were made about an officer, too. The section was accidentally taken from an earlier draft. I'd already fixed it before your comment.
Nice edit. Couldn't let a compliment to the PI stay up there for too long huh?
Well, hell, we don't fire our PRESIDENT for lying, even when those lies cost thousands of lives. Why should we fire our cops?
@7: A-fucking-men, sister!
Dominic @5, I was interrupted mid-comment-typing and didn't notice that you had revised the post in the meantime. Sorry about that.
Still, inserting "accusations of" pays lip service to the issue without actually addressing it. The problem is with the underlying logic.
(emphasis mine)By citing these accusations as examples of non-firing offenses, you are making the explicit argument that they illustrate police department judgement about the relative seriousness of different offenses. That argument is only valid if the accusations themselves somehow constitute offenses.
I appreciate your attention to the point, and I believe your revision was made in good faith. The flaw here is too deep to fix with a wording change, though.
For the record, I don't dispute the post's main point that the firing of Sgt. Wender was BS.
The point is who actually got fired and for what offense. In some of the cases examined there seems little dispute that officers broke rules. But chiefs and sheriffs let officers off with a slap on the wrist for their offenses, while dismissing the integrity-damning lying offense.
For example, one of the officers who did get investigated but wasn’t fired for lying left his gun out and someone fired it. The gun was fired. The offense most certainly occurred. As for allegedly lying, the PI reports, “Muhammed's statements to his own department's investigators about what happened conflicted with what he previously told a Lynnwood detective and with what witnesses say they observed, documents showed.” But he didn’t get fired. He was off the hook with “failure to exercise appropriate judgment and discretion…”
So, in cases like these, it is simply an "accusation" because the department did not uphold the dishonesty charge.
On the other hand, officer Wender alleges he was fired for "lying" when the real offense was his political actions. So it appears the real issue is what offense gets an officer fired. Whether or not the departments charge it as lying and then fire the officer is a matter of discretion based on whether brass backs the officer—not whether they could prove dishonesty.
Dominic @11, thanks for the reply. I appreciate the chance to engage with you.
The comment @11 supports your argument by adding a crucial ingredient missing from the original post: It makes--as opposed to reports--an accusation (the unattended gun case) and asserts it as credible. Now there's a basis to compare fired-for-speech vs. not-fired-for-negligence.
One other thing caught my attention:
So roughly a third of officers accused lost their jobs. That could be seen as huge. Or miniscule. What we don't know is who's doing the accusing. Fellow officers? Activists? Internal Affairs? Criminal suspects (through their defense attorneys)? Neutral bystanders?
(Doubtless it's all of the above, but what's the balance?)
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