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Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
In January 2013, police raided the home of a Cleveland drug dealer, saying in a search warrant that an informant had recently bought crack cocaine there.
But the drug dealer had surveillance cameras that proved the officers were lying. He gave the tapes to his lawyer, who showed the FBI. The feds then worked to uncover a massive scandal of a rogue street-crimes unit that robbed and framed drug suspects who felt they had no choice but plead guilty to fraudulent charges.
Four years later, authorities are still unwinding the damage.
Three cops who worked for the city of East Cleveland are in prison. Cases against 22 alleged drug dealers have been dismissed. Authorities are searching for another 21 people who are eligible to have their convictions tossed. On top of those injustices, there is a slim chance that any of them will be fully reimbursed, because the disgraced officers and their former employer don't have the money.
Source: NBC News
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday March 28 2017, @03:23PM (7 children)
This is fairly local to me, so as you can imagine this is a really big story around here.
To answer your question, it's darn near "yes".
The city of East Cleveland, Ohio is separate from but adjacent to Cleveland. The municipality is in fact completely broke, drowning in debt, the property values have been dropping like a rock, and crime is through the roof. There are plans in the works to end its existence and make East Cleveland part of Cleveland [cleveland.com], but the city government of Cleveland doesn't want to do that because East Cleveland is such a dump and a financial wreck that Cleveland doesn't want to take on the job of fixing it. This is not even close to the only scandal plaguing East Cleveland's government, either.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 28 2017, @03:34PM (4 children)
Interesting. So do you have any idea why last week I just saw a brand-new police car marked "East Cleveland" driving north on I-95 in Virginia, from Richmond towards DC (and probably towards Ohio)? He was driving really slow, about 5 or so under the speed limit, and disrupting traffic a lot until people figured out he was out-of-state.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:03PM (1 child)
No idea. Among other things, it's possible it's for one of the 30 or so other places in the US named "Cleveland".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:55PM
A place named "Cleveland" doesn't put "East Cleveland" on their cars. That wouldn't make sense unless "East Cleveland" is a separate municipality, and the only "East Cleveland" I seem able to find is this one.
Of course that doesn't rule it out but it seems unlikely.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday March 28 2017, @07:42PM (1 child)
How could you tell it was brand new?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 28 2017, @08:03PM
It looked brand-new and didn't have any license plates.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday March 28 2017, @09:22PM
Pfft, those corrupt East Cleveland cops were amateurs, to so blatantly frame innocent people. Houston, now, they know how to frame innocent people! They use a deeply flawed drug test. No cops were guilty of anything so crude and obviously illegal as planting evidence. When their racket got exposed, they blamed it all on the drug test.
https://www.propublica.org/article/common-roadside-drug-test-routinely-produces-false-positives [propublica.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @06:33AM
but the city government of Cleveland doesn't want to do that because East Cleveland is such a dump and a financial wreck that Cleveland doesn't want to take on the job of fixing it. This is not even close to the only scandal plaguing East Cleveland's government, either.
If some area the other side of the world goes to hell, it often doesn't really matter if you don't do anything, won't affect you. But if an adjacent area goes to hell, there's a high chance it will affect you.
Even China tries to keep North Korea from completely falling apart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93North_Korea_relations#Economic_relations [wikipedia.org]