Police recording of crime: mandated productivity

[ganulv]

Moderator's Note

This thread's title was 'Ah, mandated productivity (former NYPD detective makes corruption allegations' until today (25th May 2014), as it covers beyond New York it has been amended to 'Police recording of crime: mandated productivity' (ends).

We fabricated drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas, former detective testifies | NYDailyNews.com

A former NYPD narcotics detective snared in a corruption scandal testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas.


The bombshell testimony from Stephen Anderson is the first public account of the twisted culture behind the false arrests in the Brooklyn South and Queens narc squads, which led to the arrests of eight cops and a massive shakeup.


Anderson, testifying under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, was busted for planting cocaine, a practice known as “flaking,” on four men in a Queens bar in 2008 to help out fellow cop Henry Tavarez, whose buy-and-bust activity had been low.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_c...#ixzz1arFzbXwc

[Fuchs]

Coincidentally, I saw just today a video in which observers discussed how NYPD had arrested Wall Street protesters under false charges, saying that a NYPD Lt arrived and told them he saw them doing this, that, that - and they replied to him that he wasn't even present before the arrest.

[Ken White]

What a surprise!

People. They just will not do what we think they should...

News reports (with some credibility) keeping people honest have always been helpful. The world goes on.

[ganulv]

I had a job for a year or so that had me at the local cop shop often enough to lead me to the conclusion that law enforcement is a damn thankless line of work. Whenever my friends and family bitch about cops I tell them to think of a police officer like a snake—they’ve got more reason to be scared of a stranger than vice versa.

Stories like this don’t help me make my case, though.

[carl]

What a surprise!

Individual officers behaving badly is one thing, a culture of corruption fostered by department policy is another thing altogether.

Ganulv: The way I like to think of officers is that they are just citizens who concentrate on an area of any citizen's responsibility more than the other guys. They have no more rights than the other guy, but they do have higher standards they must fulfill.

[Ken White]

Individual officers behaving badly is one thing, a culture of corruption fostered by department policy is another thing altogether.

I assume that groupings of Officers behaving badly due to an unofficial, against policy but still collaborative protective or supportive effect is something else again.

They are people, just like the rest of us. The neat thing is they get do things when confronted with any efforts aimed at or inadvertently responsible for POP.

[davidbfpo]

Mandated productivity

What a delightful term. There is a large gulf between fabricated evidence and an individual officer's decision to exercise discretion. In my experience 'mandated productivity', in the UK known as 'Performance Indicators', meant arrests were made and discretion was not exercised.

Secondly, it was the specialist squads, invariably plain-clothed, that had a different approach, fabricating evidence was rare, although a feature in very high profile such as the 'Birmingham Six': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham_Six. Not being professional in evidence gathering and ignoring current laws was far more frequent, such as the West Midlands Police Serious Crime Squad:http://www.innocent.org.uk/misc/wmidlands.html