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False Arrests and Sexual Harassment of Inmates in Philadelphia

Erica Hejnar and another woman were arrested for "suspicion of drug possession." That's strike one against the Philadelphia Police Department, because neither woman had any drugs.

Hejnar and her friend were eventually released without charges, but not before Officer Norberto Cappas ordered them "to kiss and touch each other and expose their breasts."

Hejnar and her friend told Internal Affairs that Cappas dangled the keys and taunted them as he escalated his sexual demands, telling them they would do as he asked if they wanted to go home that night.

That's strike two. Strike three: Henjar collected $17,500 from the city, "in part because city lawyers concluded that she never should have been detained in the first place." No kidding. It's difficult to imagine that there was probable cause to arrest two women for drug possession who weren't in possession of drugs.

Strike two was enough to get Cappas fired, at least for now. A police tribunal found him guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer and of lying during a departmental investigation. The police commissioner canned him, effective at the conclusion of a 30 day suspension. But Cappas may still convince an arbitrator to overturn the commissioner's decision.

Kudos to The Philadelphia Inquirer for pursuing the story.

The Internal Affairs case sat in limbo for years until The Inquirer raised questions about it in an article in August.
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    So many beneficiaries of drug laws (none / 0) (#1)
    by Yes2Truth on Wed Jun 27, 2007 at 07:29:54 PM EST

    Why in the world would anyone in their right mind want to legalize the possession, sale, and/or use of drugs?

    Has anyone given thought to whether there would be any NEW beneficiaries if additional drugs or "drugs" are criminalized?

    Erm (none / 0) (#3)
    by manys on Wed Jun 27, 2007 at 08:09:59 PM EST
    Are you really expecting a concise answer to those questions here?

    Parent
    microcosm (none / 0) (#2)
    by Sumner on Wed Jun 27, 2007 at 07:58:49 PM EST
    What we say in our treasured documents is not, "These truths are self-evident, that all men are created equal." What we say is, "We hold  these truths to be self-evident" -- in other words, we're going to act as if these truths are self-evident, but in practice, those truths have never  been self-evident. And the reason that cops only trust other cops is because they know that they've been hired to lie, they've been hired to beat the balls off people, and get them to confess so they can be excluded from society. That's the first part of their job. The second part of their job is to lie about what they did. And the third part of their job is to know that if they're caught, they're going to be put in jail.

      -- David Milch, Salon.com, March 5, 2005

    That illustration accounts for all the mythical numbers we see in criminal justice. It accounts for the lying at DoJ. No one ever asked the Attorney General how much time he personally spends on matters dealing with pornography and sexuality, (my guess is a lot) -- but all those "Women in Chains" style movies must be based on some kernel of truth, some underlying idea of perquisite. Consider the Tom Foley Syndrome, previously known as the Ed Meese Syndrome.

    Consider the pathological prudery that creates draconian laws that imprisons for vast periods of time, captives into an insatiable Prison Industrial Complex. That is real perversion.

    And it first started by their attacking Art, and their attacking Literature and their attacking the Humanities, with a resultant "Stepford" society.

    It was so predictable.

    these are just bad cops (none / 0) (#4)
    by diogenes on Wed Jun 27, 2007 at 08:21:14 PM EST
    Bad cops should be punished, and bad police systems should be fixed.  How this connects to national drug policy is beyond me.  Bad cops can arrest and harass people on any number of contrived charges.

    yeah, it is all totally independent! (none / 0) (#5)
    by 4liberties on Wed Jun 27, 2007 at 09:26:50 PM EST
     Not so fast ... Drug laws open the doors for the worst kinds of abuses, those that would be almost unimaginable otherwise (think no-knock warrants, confiscation of property without due process, and other BS like that).

     "War on drugs" is the gateway "drug" that naturally leads to many other abuses.

    Parent

    Tell me (none / 0) (#9)
    by scarshapedstar on Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 10:08:32 AM EST
    Drug possession. Can you think of another victimless crime that doesn't even involve another human being? You grow a plant and you're sentenced to be beaten and raped daily for months or years.

    If only we thought of, I dunno, high-level governmental acts of torture as deserving similar degrees of retribution.

    Parent

    Sumner sums it up well (none / 0) (#6)
    by Yes2Truth on Wed Jun 27, 2007 at 10:00:29 PM EST

    The criminal "justice" system and the prison industrial complex are both badly in need of major reform.  As in eliminating about 90% of the criminal laws on the books, changing the incentives of cops so they don't have anything to gain from making more arrests, ditto prosecutors and their lust for convictions, judges who pander to the ignorant masses by showing no mercy and handing down sentences that any sane person knows is cruel and USUAL punishment, prison guard unions
    and on and on.  

    Well said... (none / 0) (#8)
    by kdog on Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 09:08:05 AM EST
    especially the bit about deleting 90% of the criminal code.

    This stuff is bound to happen in an over- legislated, over-criminalizing, authority-worshipping society.

    Parent

    arbitration (none / 0) (#7)
    by 1980Ford on Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 01:50:11 AM EST
    Cops have a lot of rights in arbitration, and they aren't afraid to exercise them, and don't feel hypocritical at all. Some of those cases make for interesting reading.