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Call it whatever you like, as far as I can see, the man simply has no business being in law enforcement. He's more of a threat to public safety than the criminals he was supposed to apprehend. As much as I wish to see him prosecuted for the laws he has broken, I will be satisfied if he is never allowed to work in law enforcement again. As an aside, I wonder if he will ever try to apply for a CHL (or if he will ever be eligible given his excuse of mental illness).......

Jumping Frog wrote:

philip964 wrote:Interesting the difference between Texas and Ohio. They have to constantly sue the government to get their rights under the constitution and Ohio law.

What is going on here is the prosecutor knows that the city is facing a lot of liability from a civil suit, so they are desperately trying to push through any kind of criminal conviction so that it will help their defense in the civil rights case.

Given the nature and degree of the evidence against the officer, I would think that the best course would be for them to dismiss the charges and hammer the officer into the ground, then tell the civil case jury, "Yes an error was made and we vigorously corrected it!" You can bet that man's attorney will use the criminal proceedings to inflame the civil jury against the govt. and township. Even if they win the criminal case it's going to bite them on the backside. I wouldn't be surprised if the feds get called to investigate possible civil rights violations by the PD since this is not the only incident involving this officer.

Just found an update on this "event" at http://ohioccw.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; Apparently the PD and prosecutor are adamant about getting their 'pound of flesh' from this poor guy. They have set a trial date of November 9th. I'm beginning to think that this township would have been perfectly comfortable in 1940 Germany.......

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not concerned about this cop. I believe he needs to spend a little time behind bars. My concern is that bad guys will be released for no other reason than the fact that this cop messed up on this one incident. Not to mention the added expense of new trials granted because this one officer was discredited. I'm quite sure there will be at least one defense attorney who will use this incident to try to discredit the entire agency so his client can walk out the door. I would be willing to bet that the DA's office has already reviewed the cases this officer was involved with, to determine which ones would have to be re-fought and which ones were lost causes. I would also expect that the FBI has also considered the possibilty of a civil rights violation investigation. This is one giant sized can of worms.........

The most unfortunate aspect of this incident has yet to occur. I cannot imagine that an internal affairs investigation will do anything but call for the dismissal of the one officer, and will most likely recommend criminal prosecution of some sort. Shortly thereafter, the defense attorneys attached to any case this officer is involved with are going to go into a feeding frenzy. The actual merits of any case he has touched will become irrelevant. His "taint" will attach itself to everything regardless of the degree of his involvement. Traffic stops, felony arrests, all of it stands to be thrown out of court because of this incident. This glue trap of a situation is going to get extremely messy.......and the citizens of the community are going to be the real losers.

This is a prime example of why there are procedures in place for LEOs. These officers failed from square one. First and foremost.....secure and id the people involved. That car was going nowhere. There was no danger of any evidence being lost while they had custody of those people. They could have called for additional backup prior to conducting the search if needed. I believe these two are the exception rather than the rule for LEO's, but now this incident will be in the back of my mind whenever I see a cruiser behind me. I will always have to wonder if an officer is going to react the same way. I keep my DL and my CHL together so I can produce them at the same time if needed. I'm not entirely sure it would have helped in this particular instance.....