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Litigation Forces Change in Police Department

By TChris, Section Crime Policy
Posted on Tue Aug 02, 2005 at 12:18:16 AM EST
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by TChris

John Karoly Jr. thinks the Easton, Pennsylvania police department is one of the most abusive in the country. He should know. He's making a nice living representing victims of brutal police tactics, and his efforts have persuaded the city to take control of the problem.

In recent weeks, Mayor Phil Mitman has disbanded the SWAT team and hired Daniel Spang, a retired police chief and state police major, to devise policies on the use of force, high-speed chases and firearms. The goal is to win accreditation from the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association, which concluded in one report that the Easton department was "an agency in crisis."

Similar litigation may be warranted in Wellington, Florida, where police used Tasers, pepper spray, and batons to break up a 15 year old girl's birthday party.

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    Litigation Forces Change in Police Department | 8 comments (8 topical)
    Re: Litigation Forces Change in Police Department (none / 0) (#1)
    by aahpat on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:50 PM EST
    And the Easton police are not even the worst in the Lehigh Valley and Pennsylvania. Only among the worst. I was driven out of journalism in Allentown, also in the Lehigh Valley, by the police who did not like my refusal to stop taking pictures when they demanded that I stop taking pictures. A detective told me to get out of the business or he and others on police and emergency services would trump up charges, go into court and lie if necessary to get me off the street. I told the district attorney. He told me I should have done what I was told to do. I told the newspaper editors I freelanced for. They said that they knew the detective in question. He is a nice guy and would NEVER do such a thing. I told Karoly and he said so what. An eighteeen year journalism career gone because I did the job the way the First Amendment required me to do the job. This is the same community that regularly forces journalists out of the industry when they report unfavorable stories about the police. In Bethlehem the police burned down a home to cover their unlawful homicide of an addict. A lesson learned from the Philadelphia police and their 1985 MOVE confrontation when they burned 63 homes to the ground to cover the mass murder of 6 political and social nonconformists and five of their children. Northampton County's DA, who trains both Easton and Bethlehem police in constitutional behavior, has regularly passed these cases on to the state police and the attorney general. State police under the control of Ed Rendell the Democrat governor. Ed Rendell who was District Attorney in Philadelphia when the MOVE confrontation came down. Ed Rendell who later told the special investigative commission on the MOVE confrontation that in a meeting with police months prior to to confrontation he, as the only elected official in the room, realized at one point in the meeting that "people were going to die". He did nothing! Premeditated mass murder. He was in the room when it was planned and he did nothing. (Police officers who tried to save lives at the MOVE confrontation were later driven out of the Philadelphia police department. The FOP sold fund raising hats, pins and other items with a helicopter on them dropping the bomb. The words "Philadelphia Police Bomber Squadron". Many in the media, who had covered the mass murder, bought the items and shared the joke. they clammed up when I tried to get the items. the newspaper union closed the major dailies with a strike during the Special Commission hearings. The janitor's union that held out the longest held its meetings in the FOP union hall. Newspaper journalists who covered the hearings for publication after the strike were run out of the news business in Philadelphia.) I gave the Philadelphia Daily News its first of five front page photos of the first day of the confrontation. All together I give them 13 pictures in three days. I covered much of the hearings and suffered union threats, intimidation and later a loos of work in the region for my dedication to the First Amendment. I had to leave Philadelphia to get work. Democrat Rendell. Democrat Northampton Co. DA John M. Morganelli. Democrats supported Fraternal Order of Police in Pennsylvania. Just a small taste of why I came to leave the Democrats by 1995. Pennsylvania is Constitutionally bankrupt. Democrats and their prosecutor dominated leadership are morally and constitutionally bankrupt. Unions in Pennsylvania are white dominated and right wing more than not.

    Re: Litigation Forces Change in Police Department (none / 0) (#3)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:51 PM EST
    Too bad you lived in that dreadfully unamerican burg, aahpat. Trying to draw a correlation to the entire Democratic party is HILARIOUS. There are tens of millions of us who do not live in PA, and our leaders mostly aren't former prosecutors with a machine in a corrupt town. But if you want a list of them, why don't you take a quick look at the membership of the Federalist Society. Suggesting that Clinton is responsible for the prison population numbers in the US is HILARIOUS. Just have a look at WHY Dems have to bang the anticrime drum -- it's across the aisle, with the people who think that 'Kill them all' is a foreign policy.

    Re: Litigation Forces Change in Police Department (none / 0) (#4)
    by aahpat on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:51 PM EST
    Paul: You can make all of the excuses and rationalizations that you want for the right wing Democratic Party. I tried that for thirty years and when I could no longer look myself in the mirror without wanting to puke I quit the party. Prosecutor Clinton built his career on the incarceration of others. So have too damned many Democrats. The bottom line is that the Democrats are too right wing to represent my pluralistic pro democracy values. That will hold true until they end their support for the anti democracy, terrorist funding, right wing incumbency supporting drug war. The Democrats have been dominated by the right wing my whole life. From Frank Rizzo in Philadelphia strip searching black activists in the street for the TV cameras in 1968, to John Kerry first turning his back on VVAW because they wanted to join the Civil Rights movement then becoming one of the first drug war prosecutors locking up and mass disenfranchising minorities and nonconformists. To the Wallace wing of the Democrats in congress in 1970 whole-heartedly supporting Nixon's creation of the drug war not to mitigate drug abuse but as a Jim Crow effort to subvert the Voter rights Act and the 26st Amendment. To Kerry pushing legislation as far back as 1989 to shoot down civilian aircraft for the drug war. and finally to Kerry slipping the amendment into appropriations legislation that facilitated the shoot down in Peru of the missionary family in the name of the drug war. I don't give a damn how many millions of diverse Democrats there are your elected leaders are all fascists right wingers who have participated with the GOP in subverting core values, legislation and principles of the pluralistic legacy of the Democratic party. The John Kerry's, Ed Rendell's, Dianne Feinstein's, Joe Lieberman's and dozens of other prosecutor Democratic national leaders, who have built their political resumes on the high incarceration rates of the drug war, are nothing but predators. Democrats who support them are not the Democrats I would willingly hand my political franchise to. These mass murdering right wing predators do not represent my values and will never get my vote.

    Re: Litigation Forces Change in Police Department (none / 0) (#5)
    by Sailor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:51 PM EST
    aahpat, out of respect for our hostess please refrain from using 'expletive deleted' words. It's not puritain or the pc police, it's just that she wants the site to be SFW. IRT your diatribe against dems being " right wing prosecutor dominated", I disagree. I'm no fan of the party, but there are plenty of repub prosecutors too. It is one of the standard paths of entering elected offices. Besides, the guy who dropped the bomb was a repub, and later elected mayor. Kinda shoots your theory to $hit. DAs as a subset are not generally inclined to see 'lawbreakers' as humans.

    Re: Litigation Forces Change in Police Department (none / 0) (#6)
    by jimcee on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:51 PM EST
    aaphat, As much as I can understand your frustration it does seem that you have a predetermined outcome for your reporting. You should not give up your grail quest because local officials have threatened you. So you lost your job as a journalist and you've given up because you feel pressure from political influences... DON'T BE A WIMP! You have already taken your story to a larger market here at TL so keep up the fight. If you are right the populace of PA will be better served and if your just a crank then you will be exposed. Good luck and the truth be with you.

    Re: Litigation Forces Change in Police Department (none / 0) (#7)
    by Johnny on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:51 PM EST
    You have already taken your story to a larger market here at TL so keep up the fight. If you are right the populace of PA will be better served and if your just a crank then you will be exposed.
    Jimcee forgets that he may be right and that could be EXACTLY why he is igonored? Why is it only "cranks" that are "exposed"?

    Re: Litigation Forces Change in Police Department (none / 0) (#8)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:51 PM EST
    Easton is my adopted hometown and I am a regular poster here at talkleft. The town is a town at the crossroads. Police brutality payouts cost the average taxpayer about 100 bucks a year. Phil Mitman (and I am embarrassed to say I didn't vote for him) is a fundamentally decent man who is draining a swamp of good ole' boy policing. His predecessor was the proverbial good ole' boy and a festering mole on the ass of humanity who let the police department run hog wild over the town. The police department was rudderless, directionless & facing a very difficult problem of preventing the town from becoming one of the northeast's key transhipment points for narcotics. Easton's claim to fame, other than being home to one of America's most notorious police departments (and other than its ridiculiously low housing prices for being 65 miles from SoHo, an off-Ivy college - Lafayette U, and the the Crayola factory tourist trap) is its long history as a libertarian (that's right) enclave. It currently has a burgeoning artist's community home to world class artists that thrives in the town's libertarian atmosphere of live and let live. The libertarian atmosphere has also permitted a bizarre combination of illicit, immoral and/or fattening trades to flourish around the town. Save for the police department it is a town with an exceptionally bright future. The problem is rogue elements in the police department took advantage of the lack of leadership under the last mayor. We looked the other way when we were faced with challenging economic times and our elected leadership promised us that the boys in blue would keep the bad guys away(Easton's chief industry from the 30s to the 80s was steel, it is now quickly becoming a bedroom community & college town). The boys in blue did keep some of thugs at bay, but too many of the cops become thugs themselves, with a beat down at the end of a nightstick not being uncommon (and what the bouncers in town did -- including beating a man to death in the not too distant past -- made the police seem tame). That is not to say the rogues on the police department were more than any other force, every department seemingly has a bad 10%, it is just that everyone in town who wasn't a member of that roguish 10% looked away when they did their evil deeds. I am ashamed for not speakig up louder. For the sake of my friends and neighbors, I hope it isn't too late to reclaim our town. - karl PS I should clarify, I am in the process of moving back to Easton after having been away for a couple of years. Having lived in most of America's major metro areas, I have to say it really is a great little town to live in, with some of the best people (and best coffeehouses) around, unfortunately, like every town it has problems -- a very brutal one.

    Re: Litigation Forces Change in Police Department (none / 0) (#9)
    by aahpat on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:01:51 PM EST
    Sailor at August 2, 2005 05:40 PM Sorry but your wrong. All that it demonstrates is the validity of my assertions that right wing Democrats and right wing Republicans often work in collusion against nonconformists and minorities. that is what the drug war is all about. the right wing of both parties working to mass disenfranchise anyone who is caught questioning their dogma and dictates, namely drug laws. they are a litmus test for capitulation to the right wing hegemony in America. jimcee at August 2, 2005 08:17 PM Your right. I have given up nothing. In fact just the opposite. Staying in the Democrats was giving up the fight. Here are some of my efforts to get the issues out. Some of my links have been technically problematic for TalkLeft in the past so if they have to delete them you can find the pages in Google. Cracked Bell site index http://mysite.verizon.net/aahpat/index.html al Qaeda's success strategy - Silent Jihad - http://mysite.verizon.net/aahpat/aq/aq.htm LeftIndependent blog I firmly believe that solutions to the problems of right wing subversion of American democratic institutions will not come from within the structure of the two dominance parties. I encourage Americans to be individuals rather than sheep. Turn to the third parties and Independent columns. the Parties do not pay attention to their sycophants. They do pay attention to squeaky wheels. Consider the drug reform movement of the past thirty five years for a working model. Until the early 1990's drug reformers stayed loyal to the Democrats and got crapped on in every election. the Democrats would expect them to support Democrats but after the elections the Democrats would get together with the Republicans to write more and more onerous drug war laws. In the early '90s drug reformers started gravitating to the Libertarians and the Greens and started immediately to rack up electoral successes for drug policy change. Americans came to them more and more. In the past ten years drug reform has had more than 150 successes in electoral, legislative and judicial contests. Unheard of before reformers started to turn their backs on the Democrats. Simply put, you cannot expect change by supporting the status quo parties. All Writs at August 2, 2005 08:57 PM Your absolutely right about Easton. Its a damned shame that it, like all of Pennsylvania, has to suffer with the police state mentality of the two right wing dominant political parties.

    Litigation Forces Change in Police Department | 8 comments (8 topical)