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Old 12-28-2007, 09:45 AM   #7 (permalink)
host
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dc_dux, I was unaware of Bush's pre-election commitment to removal of police accountability and a key impartial "check and balance" of the DOJ Civil Rights enforcement oversight. I don't know which is worse, the transparent pandering for votes by Bush, the racist implications of removing a protection that was an anti-racism reform at DOJ, or the hubris displayed by a Texas governor, a state with the highest per capita imprisonment and execution rate in the country, and with a poor reputation for civil rights and for protection of the accused:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...80&postcount=6

and here:
(Note that it took the FBI and the news media to bring this problem to public attention and possible remediation and accountability.)
Quote:
http://www.khou.com/crimelab/stories...w.3f93831.html
FBI audit: Problems at HPD crime lab known before it reopened

10:55 PM CST on Wednesday, November 14, 2007

By Jeremy Desel / 11 News

In our ongoing investigation into the Houston Police Department’s crime lab, 11 News has uncovered new evidence showing there were problems at the new crime lab -- before it ever reopened.

Why should you care?

Because a mistake at this lab could send you to jail or it could let a killer walk free.

In the lab, evidence is supposed to be protected.

We have protected the identity of a crime lab analyst currently working in the lab.

That’s because the analyst is afraid to be fired for speaking out and claims that at the Houston Crime Lab, problems are to be protected too.

“They are interested in keeping it quiet. They are not interested in fixing it,” the analyst told 11 News.

There are also allegations of cheating and evidence custody tampering inside the new lab. Questions raised in an official affidavit to internal affairs investigators.

An affidavit obtained by 11 News.

“We do respect that it has in common DNA, but it is a far different situation that what occurred in the past,” said Houston Mayor Bill White said when 11 News questioned him on the latest problems uncovered.

Maybe, but the trouble has been brewing right from the lab’s rebirth in November 2005.

Trouble uncovered in a March 2006 FBI audit of that new HPD Crime Lab....
Here's your article, loquitur:
Quote:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...ERJURY?SITE=AP
Dec 6, 10:46 PM EST

Recording Nets Charges for NY Detective

By TOM HAYS
Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- A teenage suspect who secretly recorded his interrogation on an MP3 player has landed a veteran detective in the middle of perjury charges, authorities said Thursday.

Unaware of the recording, Detective Christopher Perino testified in April that the suspect "wasn't questioned" about a shooting in the Bronx, a criminal complaint said. But then the defense confronted the detective with a transcript it said proved he had spent more than an hour unsuccessfully trying to persuade Erik Crespo to confess - at times with vulgar tactics.

Once the transcript was revealed in court, prosecutors asked for a recess, defense attorney Mark DeMarco said. The detective was pulled from the witness stand and advised to get a lawyer.

Perino, 42, was arraigned Thursday on 12 counts of first-degree perjury and faces as many as seven years on each count, prosecutors said. He was released on $15,000 bail.

His attorney did not immediately respond to a telephone message seeking comment Thursday. A New York Police Department spokesman declined to comment.

The allegations "put the safety of all law-abiding citizens at risk because they undermine the integrity and foundation of the entire criminal justice system," District Attorney Robert Johnson said in a statement.

Perino had arrested Crespo on New Year's Eve 2005 while investigating the shooting of a man in an elevator. While in an interrogation room at a station house, Crespo, then 17, stealthily pressed the record button on the MP3 player, a Christmas gift, DeMarco said.

After Crespo was charged with attempted murder, his family surprised DeMarco by playing him the recording.

"I couldn't believe my ears," said the lawyer, who decided to keep the recording under wraps until he cross-examined Perino at the trial.

Prosecutors then offered Crespo, who had faced as many as 25 years if convicted, seven years if he pleaded guilty to a weapons charge. He accepted.
Too bad that this is a "host" thread, and thus, subject to a "shunning" by a portion of the TFP community. There is much here for everyone to share opinions and anecdotes about.

It seems this is a subject that the news media avoids much discsussion of. It is ironic that unrelated incidences of criminal activity attributed to members of a common race, for example, are lumped together, labeled as "black crime", and packaged for presentation and discussion as "one big problem", whereas police and judicial criminal acts are not "lumped" and even packaged for discussion on the actual scale and dimension that they portend as a threat to society.
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