Accountability starts with doing the job right, not halfway and letting bad guys roam our streets in uniforms with badges.

I have no room in my heart for crooked cops.

Good luck to the Milburn family!!

Yeah, police officers are involved in domestic violence against their partners or other family members at a disproportionately higher rate.

Not to mention alcoholism, DUI offenses, non-domestic violence incidents, suicide, and all manner of low level antisocial behavior (disregard for traffic laws, generally obnoxious behavior, etc). Its amazing how people who are drawn to jobs which give them power and authority respond when they are given a gun and told that the rules no longer apply to them.

And I think that “undercover” officers can be some of the most unstable on the force and I believe definitely in some cases, they hide officers there that they can’t put in public in patrol. They’re high on the list of officers who do shootings on duty and really high in the DV list as well.

This makes a lot of sense. What is the “DV list”?

Absolutely appalling. I hope that IA is all over these… men… and gets a whole range of complaints that blows the “case” against the family out of the water.

IA is almost never “all over” anything. It serves two purposes. To cover up the conduct of bad officers and to protect the city from civil liability and to punish any good officers who tell on the bad ones. And if you do deal with IA and the officers get pissed off and retaliate, you’re next to defenseless. So people should be very cautious if ever thinking about filing complaints with them or being involved in any of their investigations.

That’s pretty much except for rare cases and Rodney King in L.A. actually was one of those rare cases. The IA investigation had nothing really much to do with the criminal investigation as they’re usually bifurcated or separate because of two separate legal standards for officers giving statements about what they did or witnessed for administrative and criminal investigations.

The four officers were fired which is the best outcome out of that IA investigation but it only went forward b/c of public exposure. If you remember, George Holliday, the man who took the footage of the King beating tried to hand his tape to the LAPD first but they wouldn’t accept it, so he went to Warren Wilson, probably the only mainstream TV reporter who would accept it.

The criminal case went south because of anemic prosecution, vital evidence being excluded including the officers’ prior disciplinary history in the LAPD and in one case, an outside LE agency and because the jury pool in Simi Valley is mostly White retired military and/or police. That trial was won by the officers after the change of venue was granted. My county was third on the change of venue list and the outcome would have been the same, an acquittal.

From the Chief himself:

This incident occurred in mid-2006. I came to the Galveston Police Department in July of 2008, about two years later. The case is pending and I can’t comment on pending litigation, as much as I’d like to do so. The case also involves a juvenile offender and the law prohibits me prohibited from commenting about that. The case is reportedly close to a trial date and that may be a reason for the notoriety. Attorneys often try their cases in the court of public opinion in order to influence the outcome in a courtroom. I think that many will be surprised about the facts once the facts are actually reported in the mainstream media and not as reported in the alternative media.

Charles Wiley
Chief of Police

LOL, only because this is classic chief-speak. They’ll tell you first how law prohibits them from commenting on a case and then they’ll naturally comment on it anyway but in a way that hints that there’s this top-secret information which of course they never have to reveal which shows the “truth” of the case in another light. And if only you knew, you’d be so surprised at what that was and how skewed the media has turned it to make it look like the cops are at fault.

Seriously, this just happened in my city over a different type of incident which was put in the public spotlight. But they must all read it out of the same manual or something.