Alphecca

Bad Cops, Bad Cops...

Should it be legal for a cop to break the law to catch another law-breaker? Personally, I don't think so. A judge in Nashville thinks otherwise. From the Tennessean:

Leaving a Nashville courtroom yesterday morning, two Metro police officers were greeted by their peers and supporters with handshakes and hugs. A judge had just ruled they were not guilty of illegally taking guns into a downtown nightclub last year.

Gang investigators Ernest Cecil and Ulysses Hernandez have been on desk duty for the last 10 months and still face possible punishment from an internal police investigation.

Speaking about the incident publicly for the first time, Cecil told The Tennessean that he and Hernandez had been following up on information that drugs were being sold at Hurricanes on Second Avenue on that December night. While they were not technically on the clock, they were conducting police business, he said.

"The only thing I'm guilty of is being a workaholic," Cecil said. "When I go out to socialize, I don't go to Hurricanes."

It is true that cops are never really off-duty, or rather that they are expected to be ready to be a cop IF NEEDED when off-duty. And that is well and good except that these cops were in no condition to be on-duty:

Cecil said he had been sent into bars and clubs by supervisors and told to have a drink and blend in, including during surveillance of visiting rap artists.

Police officials said yesterday that if the officers were conducting an official investigation into the club, their supervisors should have known about it.

"There was no authorization for them to be there, nor did supervisors have any knowledge of them being there," police spokesman Don Aaron said.

I can still be sympathetic -- a bit -- for the cops if they were really there to pursue bad guys but:

Both detectives were ordered by the department to take breath-alcohol tests and blew .10%, according to police officials.
The legal limit for motorists is .08% and their unmarked police vehicles were parked on a nearby street.

Records from the police investigation show that Cecil and Hernandez paid for their drinks with credit cards. Hernandez's tab came to $3.50 and he left a $3 tip. Cecil spent $6 on drinks and left a $2 tip. A domestic beer was included with admission that evening, according to the investigative file.

According to their tabs, one cop had 1-2 drinks and the other had 2-3. Assuming they were average sized-guys, they must have been doing some drinking elsewhere before they got there to "blow .1%". They were sloshed, at least according to the laws and criteria they use to arrest us everyday citizens for DUI or public drunkeness. If we're too impaired at .1% to drive or perform everyday activities then thay were too impaired to be conducting a police investigation.

This is hypocrisy and it's also dangerous that they were in a position to use firearms. And did they drive there? When the government and it's authorities tell us that we must obey the law but they don't have to, something is very wrong.

Posted by Jeff Soyer at October 6, 2005 07:37 AM