Tag Archive for: Deputies

Prosecutor Says It’s OK That Deputies Faked Evidence Reports Because They Didn’t Know It Was A Crime

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Orange County (CA) sheriff’s deputies are the worst at law stuff. If the goal was to hire the stupidest, most plausibly-deniable candidates, the OCSD has hit the mark.

Deputies for this department have managed to achieve the impossible: turn local prosecutors against them by continuously mishandling evidence. Evidence must be managed carefully since it’s the thing prosecutors use to secure convictions. In the hands of deputies, evidence is just something that must be handled, however haphazardly, at whatever point they get around to it.

Since they can’t handle the job of correctly booking evidence, deputies have been faking reports, claiming evidence is booked in when it actually isn’t to avoid getting reprimanded for taking too long to process seized property. One deputy, Bryce Simpson, never did the job correctly. In 74 cases audited, 56 had no evidence booked at all and the other 18 only had some of the evidence booked.

Now, Deputy Bryce Simpson — along with Deputy Joseph Atkinson Jr. — are being given a pass by the special prosecutor presiding over the grand jury convened to decide whether these two slackers/liars should face criminal charges. According to the prosecutor, the deputies did nothing wrong because — wait for it — they didn’t know falsifying official documents was wrong.

Atkinson and Simpson told grand jurors during Mora’s hearing that they had never been trained on a Penal Code section making it illegal to falsely write in their reports that they had booked evidence — typically guns, drugs, money and photos.

Special prosecutor Patrick K. O’Toole told grand jurors that he gave the plea deal to Atkinson and Simpson partially because they had not been informed of the Penal Code section for lying on a official report.

“So I let them plead to the less serious charge because I thought it was justified under the circumstances,” O’Toole told the jurors. “And I think you will recall also their testimony that, not that ignorance of the law is any excuse, but they had never heard of this government code section before, or I don’t think any of these people ever thought the Penal Code section applies to them in what they are doing.”

You have got to be fucking kidding me. Even if we believe the deputies — and there’s no reason we should — there has never been a case ever in any situation where falsifying official documents has been considered the right thing to do. That the deputies may have been unaware these actions could result in criminal charges is beside the point. The mens rea is the knowing falsification of documents, which has never been considered OK under any circumstances. And that’s even when the threat of criminal prosecution isn’t readily apparent.

And their testimony contradicts the Sheriff’s Department spokesperson, who says both deputies received training on the filing of evidence — training that presumably included the warning that faking these documents could result in criminal charges. If they didn’t pay attention to the criminal charge part of the training, that’s hardly an excuse. Ignorance of the law doesn’t help civilians. It shouldn’t aid and abet criminal actions committed by law enforcement officers.

But this is just more in the sad, stupid history of this department, which has abused tax dollars to mold an abusive, moronic thin blue line that can’t even keep crime in check inside of its own department. A few years ago, the sheriff actually claimed deputies were unaware it was wrong (not to mention criminal) to lie in court. The deputies claimed they didn’t know what they could testify about regarding a criminal database, but rather than seek advice from the city’s lawyers, they chose to lie about their knowledge of the system.

No one is being served and/or protected by this group of deliberately obtuse officers. And they’ll continue to be underserved if this is how illegal misconduct is handled by those who are supposed to be seeking justice, rather than shielding officers from the consequences of their actions.

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Deputies Destroy House, Lives To Recover $50 Of Marijuana And A Single, Unbottled Pill

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Another life — two of them actually — has been destroyed by a law enforcement smash-and-grab operation. Acting on information residing solely in the nostrils of a single law enforcement officer, Alabama deputies destroyed a house and took possession of everything of value in it. C.J. Ciaramella has more details at Reason.

On January 31, 2018, a Randolph County sheriff’s deputy showed up at the home of Greg and Teresa Almond in Woodland, Alabama, to serve Greg court papers in a civil matter.

Greg, 50, wasn’t home, but his wife Teresa told the deputy he would be back before long. About two hours later, after Greg had returned home, he heard loud knocking on the door. He remembers shouting “hang on” and walking toward the door when it suddenly flew open. The next thing he knew he was on the floor—ears ringing, dazed, wondering if he’d just been shot.

Several deputies from the Randolph County Sheriff’s Department had kicked in his front door and thrown a flashbang grenade at his feet. The officers handcuffed and detained the couple at gunpoint, then started searching their house. The deputy from earlier had reportedly smelled marijuana, and so a county drug task force was descending on the Almonds’ home, looking for illegal drugs.

The total haul in contraband from the drug raid was less than $ 50-worth of marijuana. In addition, an officer claimed he found a loose pill containing a controlled substance. It was a pill with a controlled substance, but it was a stretch to call it “loose.” Here’s the details on that part from the Almond’s lawsuit [PDF]:

Inside the Almond residence were two safes that housed an extensive collection of over 80 guns, some of which are antiques; approximately $ 8,000.00 cash; jewelry; and other personal items, including prescription medications. The Almonds were directed to open the safes. Inside the safes, the members of the drug task force claim to have found ONE LUNESTA PILL outside of the bottle in which it had been prescribed. Lunesta is a non-narcotic class IV controlled substance prescribed to aid sleep.

Using that one pill, the department charged the couple with felony drug possession, on top of the misdemeanor marijuana charge. These charges were taken to a grand jury which proceeded to do what grand juries do best: return indictments.

These drug charges — for one pill outside of a bottle and $ 50 of marijuana apparently actually possessed by their adult son — were the first criminal charges Greg or Theresa had ever faced, coming 30 years of marriage and a few grandchildren after anyone would have expected. The charges have been reduced to misdemeanors but this raid and arrest isn’t the end of the story.

Everything that was in the safes disappeared into the Department’s hands. So did a bunch of other stuff around the house, along with the cash Greg Almond had in his wallet. The warrant inventory contains far less then the Almonds claim the deputies took. The full list includes the firearms from the safes, $ 8,000 in cash, wedding rings, medications, antique guitars, a coin collection… pretty much anything the officers felt might have resale value.

As a result of this unexpected loss and the public accusations of drug dealing, the Almonds lost their business, their house, and any hope of earning a living going forward. All that’s left is the lawsuit. It’s loaded with Constitutional violations and other harms inflicted on the innocent couple by the Sheriff’s Department, but it’s a long shot considering the wealth of defenses available to government employees. As for the property taken, that’s an even longer shot, considering how quickly agencies liquidate property and how low the burden of proof needed to keep this property is in forfeiture cases.

It’s unlikely anything the government offers — if it’s held culpable for any of this — will undo the damage it did in this raid that uncovered a small amount of marijuana and a single pill. The raid that treated a couple in their 50s like youthful cartel members destroyed a house and two lives — and all of it came as the result of a single deputy claiming he smelled marijuana when he tried to serve civil papers earlier in the day. It only took two hours for the Sheriff’s Department to mobilize a small army armed with guns and explosives to extinguish the threat of a burning plant, based on a tip no one could ever possibly corroborate.

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County Pays $90,000 Settlement To Man After Seizing $80,000 Judgment From Him Using 24 Deputies And An Armored Vehicle

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When all you have is a war hammer, everything looks like a war. That’s how Wisconsin law enforcement viewed the task it was given: collection of an $ 80,000 civil judgment from a resident of Marathon County. What should have been a deputy or two approaching the resident and apprising him of his legal options, the Marathon County Sheriff’s Department chose to handle it this way:

When officials in the tiny Town of Stettin in Marathon County went to collect a civil judgment from 75-year-old Roger Hoeppner this month, they sent 24 armed officers.

And an armored military vehicle.

This decision made national news in 2014. In the wake of the Ferguson protests, it was considered bad form to be turning normal police work into military maneuvers. But the Sheriff’s office didn’t care. Sheriff’s Captain Greg Bean said 24 deputies and a military vehicle were a proportionate response. Deputies were needed to haul away the junk that had prompted the $ 80,000 civil settlement and Hoeppner had been known to be “argumentative” in the past.

But the fact is the squad of deputies could have shown up after the judgment and other legal issues had all been sorted out and someone being contentious in the presence of law enforcement officers is hardly justification for the use of an armored vehicle.

This bit of bad optics and worse judgment had resulted in another setback for Marathon County. As [former cop/current lawyer] Greg Prickett pointed out, it has also proven the local government sucks at math. The law enforcement man-hours and legal fees incurred by the county has turned its $ 80,000 judgment into at least a $ 10,000 loss.

A 79-year-old Wisconsin man who was arrested when two dozen deputies brought an armored vehicle to his home to enforce a civil judgment has settled his civil rights claim against Marathon County for $ 90,000.

I guess this stops the bleeding. At least local taxpayers can be grateful for that. If this had proceeded to trial, it likely would have run the county further into the red.

U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb dismissed Hoeppner’s claim that the decision to enforce the civil judgment with so many deputies and the armored vehicle was unreasonable but said his claims that he was arrested without probable cause and that deputies violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights when they seized his phone and camera should go to a jury.

The county knows when it’s beat. Hilariously, the same behavior that resulted in an $ 80,000 judgment against the 75-year-old — the accumulation of used pallets and old mechanical equipment on Hoeppner’s property — continues to this day. The only change is the county no longer hassles Hoeppner about the stuff he keeps on his property. No more fines have been handed down and the county government no longer sends deputies by the dozen to keep Hoeppner in line. This whole debacle can’t even be considered a Pyrrhic victory. It’s been nothing but loss after loss — in actual dollars and in collective government PR.

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