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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: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 28 2017, @04:35PM (4 children)
Another aspect to consider before you go crazy on the budget is to estimate the likely very small amount of money involved. Like they could take a couple old police pistols down to a local pawnbroker and it would probably be all good.
The assumption in the carefully edited story is they're putting clean people in jail for decades. So my annual salary times decades adds up to some impressive damages for false imprisonment.
However look at the MTBF (Mean Time Between Felonies) for the "victims" and the cops intentionally went after career criminals with long records who were just going to end up in jail anyway for something legit in a couple weeks. So they really only had a couple weeks stolen from them, not decades.
Now I'm not saying that false imprisonment for a couple weeks should be unpunished just because the price of a greater injustice is higher. But you gotta be realistic that its not going to be rewarded by millions of dollars. Proportionately it might only be a couple thousand.
There are other weird effects involved such as life long career criminals usually not having a positive net worth, so the net effect of giving "them" money means the court will turn around and give every penny to some bank he stole from a couple felonies ago. Or the medical bills of someone he shot (perhaps a cop, or a now disabled kid). Or child support. I'm just saying another detail not discussed in the story, probably intentionally, is the money isn't likely to go to the crook who would just waste it on crack its likely every penny will go to the parents of some dude he killed or some whore's kid that hasn't got a penny of child support in five years or some hospital will finally get paid for medical treatment of some shooting he legitimately did. So paying money doens't necessarily mean its money wasted if "good people" end up with all of the money anyway.
There are other issues that life long felon career criminals will likely end up in prison within a year anyway so they best hurry and get their money because this time next year they'll all be back in the criminal justice system which complicates things. They have victimized someone else in a year or so, and the new victim will end up with more money.
It might not be as much money as you'd think. That's all I'm saying. Probably no need to mortgage city hall.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:20PM
No matter their record, you can't assume they would have committed a crime, you would need to prove it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @05:45PM (2 children)
You know what happens when you ass-u-me right?
Yup, thought so.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Tuesday March 28 2017, @08:33PM (1 child)
Ooh, I know this one!
When you assume, you save time contemplating a decision and reduce the need for additional data while simultaneously accepting the risk that you will be wrong.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @09:19PM
SO CLOSE!
I'll take another "rational responses" for $1000 Alex.