Friday, April 27, 2007

A One-Two for the DPD

N&O, this morning’s editorial: “Obscured in the hubbub following the dropped charges in the Duke lacrosse case has been the disappointing role played by the Durham Police Department. The department’s own procedures were swept off the table by a district attorney determined to prosecute what seemed to be a shaky case from the start . . . Chief Steve Chalmers now should offer an accounting of his department’s professional lapses; explain what, if any, discipline has been meted out; and detail what safeguards have been put in place to keep such lapses from occurring again. If Chalmers balks, his bosses, City Manager Patrick Baker and the City Council, should insist.”

AG’s office, this afternoon’s report: “The special prosecutors concluded that the process by which the accusing witness ultimately identified David Evans, Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty as her attackers was of questionable validity . . . The photographic arrays shown to the accusing witness on four different occasions were limited to members of the lacrosse team. ‘Fillers,’ or individuals not regarded as potential suspects, as recommended by Durham Police Department policy for identifying suspects, were never included.”

I e-mailed Durham Police spokesperson Kammie Michael to ask if she had a comment on the N&O editorial and the statements in the special prosecutors’ report.

Her reply: “The Police Department has no comment.”

40 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Michael is one of those "women never lie about rape" activists, and I am sure she was one of the people behind this Hoax. I can only hope she gets what is coming to her.

Anonymous said...

KC - I can not access the full report - What did the AG say about Meeham and the Lab - Is he going to investigate and indict for conspiracy to withhold evidence?

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

The DPD has got to be held to account for their odious actions and pay, indeed, pay dearly.

To Durham residents: Open your wallets folks, your taxes just went up big time.

Anonymous said...

This whole thing is completely outrageous to me.

And then black people wonder why white people are "prejudiced."

I was never prejudiced, before this case.

And I don't hate minorities.

I hate RACISM.

This case was racist.

Completely RACIST AGAINST WHITES.

WTF?


Duke has already proven that skin color does not exist.

They proved that before these guys enrolled at Duke.

WHAT IS DUKE'S Problem?

Probably, that I am not teaching there.

Anonymous said...

5:07 wrote: "To Durham residents: Open your wallets folks, your taxes just went up big time."

Ka-Ching!!!

Anonymous said...

Why didn't Officer Gwen Sutton come forward and stop the hoax? She knew on March 14....

David said...

Durham has many sister cities, as the following demonstrates:

[Atlanta] We now know that Kathryn Johnston fired only a single bullet, through the door as police were trying to break in. They responded with a storm of bullets, which apparently both wounded Johnston and the officers themselves. When they realized their fatal error, they planted cocaine and marijuana in the woman's home. They then pressured an uninvolved informant to testify to having made controlled buys at Johnston's home to cover their tracks.

The New York Times is now reporting that the officers have told federal investigators that their behavior was not out of the ordinary. That corruption, planting evidence, and giving false testimony are routine at APD. That's not surprising. The only way these officers could think they'd get away with all of this is if they were operating within a system that routinely allows for—or even encourages—such behavior. APD's focus on arrest numbers and professional rewards for the big bust apparently incentivized such short cuts.

It's also important to remember that it's possible we wouldn't know any of this were it not for the uncooperative informant who admirably refused to help the cops cover their asses.
http://www.theagitator.com/archives/027748.php#027748 (via Instapundit)

Anonymous said...

I think the N&O should have changed their editorial as follows: "Chief Steve Chalmers now should offer an accounting of his department’s professional lapses, at least if he ever bothers to come in to work."

Let's not forget that Nifong had a clear field because Chalmers was AWOL and because the city manager ordered the responding police officers to keep quiet about what they saw that evening. If you add in Levicy's subjective description of events, the incompetence of investigators Gottlieb and Himan, and the Herald-Sun's biased reporting, then it's clear why the players didn't stand a chance.

Anonymous said...

The best remedy for what the Durham Police did is criminal prosecution of officers who were complicit in the conspiracy to frame the Duke 3. This, and only this, will cause police departments to clean up their acts.

Anonymous said...

The DPD has no comments because Steve Chalmers is on vacation until......, well until this whole mess goes away.

DPD = Durham Putz Department.

Anonymous said...

The N&O said:
Obscured in the hubbub following the dropped charges in the Duke lacrosse case has been the disappointing role played by the Durham Police Department.

The is accurate provided "disappointing" is defined as "scandalous and probably criminal."

Anonymous said...

Well, it's obvious that the N & O didn't receive a copy of the letter Judy Parker sent to the H-S. Had they seen that, they would know that everything is A-OK in Bull(shit) City.

Anonymous said...

The feds are all over the Atlanta case, lead by the local US attorney.

The feds have avoided everything about the Duke case--hate threats by the NBBP, witness intimidation (Elmo and others), Blinco's ("Rodney King South"), denial of due process and speedy trial, denial of civil rights under color of law, etc. etc. ad naseum.

Something is wrong...

Anonymous said...

To Scott 7:03

Durham is not the Bull City, it's the City of Medicine, as indicated on the official website. That may explain why Mangum was taking so many meds...

Anonymous said...

1. Who can prosecute the Durham PD officers who deserve it?

The clearly conflicted Durham DA cannot: to prosecute the evidence-tampering cops would expose the DA's office.

2. What steps are being taken to prevent destruction of evidence (discarded computers, notes etc) from Durham PD?

3. When does the statute of limitations for obstruction of justice etc run on the Durham PD?

Cedarford said...

The feds are all over the Atlanta case, lead by the local US attorney.

The feds have avoided everything about the Duke case--hate threats by the NBBP, witness intimidation (Elmo and others), Blinco's ("Rodney King South"), denial of due process and speedy trial, denial of civil rights under color of law, etc. etc. ad naseum.

Something is wrong...


Not really, Bush hack Alberto (Panch) Gonzales has three firm rules:

1. Any denial of Civil Rights to blacks deserves immediate federal involvement.
2. Any complaint by a Mexican drug smuggler warrants Feds throwing the book at Border Patrol agents.
3. If Reade Seligmann was Rahib Suleiman, David Evans was Dahood Estfan, and Colin Finnerty was Khalid Fan'althabib - AG Pancho would have been in Durham before Nifong even made his "magical" at the copier discovery.

Anonymous said...

City of Medicine, huh? And DUMC is a world-class medical center, I bet. The kind of place where a doctor who has performed hundreds of pelvic exams on women has a patient come into the ER claiming a violent, multiple-orifice rape and beating. This experienced doctor sees a whitish discharge and some mild swelling in the vagina, and using her great medical training and finely-honed diagnostic skills, the doctor assumes the discharge is semen, and the swelling is proof of blunt force trauma from the "rape." A few months later, when confronted with evidence that there was no rape, this great medical mind says whoops, maybe that whitish discharge (which she failed to chart or test) wasn't semen after all. Maybe that -- and the mild swelling in the vagina -- were just the result of a common yeast infection.

That's some great medicine at work, isn't it?

Anonymous said...

1. Who can prosecute the Durham PD officers who deserve it?

The Special Litigation Section of the DOJ handles corrupt local police departments :

U.S. Department of Justice
Civil Rights Division
950 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Special Litigation Section, PHB
Washington, DC 20530
(202) 514-6255
Fax: (202) 514-6273 or (202) 514-0212

2. What steps are being taken to prevent destruction of evidence (discarded computers, notes etc) from Durham PD?

Probably a speed-up is under way to deep-six all of it. (Remember, the police tapes in this case for which a motion was made, were thereafter 'erased' rather than presented to the court.)

3. When does the statute of limitations for obstruction of justice etc run on the Durham PD?

IIRC (I may be wrong) the statute for civil rights violations is five years. (?)

Anonymous said...

Durham no longer is the Bull City. It is the Bullshit City.

Anonymous said...

I really doubt that Patrick Baker will put Steve Chalmers to task about the DPD's role in the hoax for obvious reasons. Furthermore, it doesn't look like Steve Chalmers will hold his own staff accountable for their bad decisions either. Maybe his own staff secured approval from Chalmers himself before they did what they did. It's bad enough that Durham has been getting bad press before this incident, but for these people in power to contribute to the bad press? The people of Durham deserve better.

Anonymous said...

I certainly hope that Mr. Chalmers receives a subpoena or something better as a retirement gift. I do not care if he was "out of the loop" or not. He was the chief of police, and he declared that the goal of the police was to obtain a conviction (his words).

Thus, he is as involved as the rest of them. Lock 'em up! Give him a retirement gift -- in jail!

Anonymous said...

It's at times like this that I am glad we have such a tenacious, competent, hard charging U.S. Attorney General. Oops. My bad.

Anonymous said...

The DPD already had the reputation of being a Micky Mouse police department before this incident.
The Duke case just proved their title was deserving.

Anonymous said...

Carolyn says:

Chalmers doesn't exist.

The Wachowski brothers created him when they were drafting the first script of the "Matrix". (That's why Chalmers can't let anybody get too close to him - your hand will go right through him.) Anyway, it was sad. The brothers dumped Chalmers when Laurence Fishburne proved he looked better in those weird glasses.

That's where Chalmers has been all this time - out there looking for those weird brothers to plead that he's still ready for his 'close-up'.

Anonymous said...

As a white, I'd feel more comfortable driving through Port-au-Prince, Haiti than Durham, NC.

I'm sure that the Papa Doc Duvalier has more commitment to justice than some of the current crowd in Durham city government.

DJ Stillwater said...

As a police officer myself, Durham PD's performance was most disturbing to me. When the accuser's story seem to change every time she told it, a simple request to take a polygraph potentially could have ended this sad story.
Durham PD, particularly their command level personnel, should have stopped Nifong's bullying when he took over the case.
In fairness to the PD, I don't think they initially believed her story, and that could explain the delay in obtaining a search warrant to the residence and delays in interviewing some of the key witnesses.
By not administering a polygraph at the initial stages of the case was further proof Nifong did not want to know the real story.

Anonymous said...

A couple of things. First, federal law prohibits giving a lie detector test to a female who alleges rape. Second, columnist Steve Chapman has written a good piece on Alberto Gonzales and the Peter Principle.

http://www.reason.com/news/
show/119867.html

We not only are dealing with political animals; we are dealing with incompetent political animals.

Anonymous said...

9:31
You have no idea how right you are.
I was out for dinner with a friend of mine several months ago in Durham. This resident of Durham is a black professional. His car had been parked at another location and I gave him ride back to the downtown parking lot to get his car.
As soon as he closed the door to my passenger's side, he locked the car door. It was jarring to me. I didn't consider Durham that dangerous, but here we have a lifelong black resident immediately locking a car door when traveling in Durham.
That tells you something.

MikeZPurdue said...

"The (Durham) Police have no comment"
-- now that's a true "blue wall of silence" :)

The fact that the DPD intimidated the
cabbie witness, in full view of all the
national media attention that Nifong
himself had attracted, is just incredulous.

Anonymous said...

I read the report.

I hope the books written on this subject cover the fact that this entire tragedy was- to be clear- the displacement of leadership with persoanl agenda - beginning with the SANE nurse, and carried to criminal lengths by DA Nifong -

To be sure, the primary failure is one of leadership -- just look at Brodhead as the posterchild for such sad failure. I rest my case.

GaryB said...

Bakerman said...

...
[Atlanta] We now know that Kathryn Johnston fired only a single bullet, through the door as police were trying to break in. They responded with a storm of bullets,


Well, its a completely different topic, but the war on drugs has done *more* to impoverish blacks, make drugs available to kids, kill innocent people, boost criminal gangs, increase the crime rate, corrupt police, fill our prisons with non-violent offenders, stifle civil liberties than ... er, Bush. It is expensive and TOTALLY counter productive. Time it ended already.

Way off topic, but it also reminds me of the Gay marriage debate ... I got an idea -- get Government out of the marriage business. Problem solved.

Anonymous said...

As a police officer myself, Durham PD's performance was most disturbing to me. When the accuser's story seem to change every time she told it, a simple request to take a polygraph potentially could have ended this sad story

As a police officer, you should know that Violence Against Women Act (VoWa) specifically forbids polygraph tests for rape victims. It would be a illegal. After all, rape victims never lie so what would be the point?
You can thank Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi for this wondeful law. VoWa has also unlimited amount of money for all rape victims' legal fees.

DJ Stillwater said...

Bill Anderson,
With all due respect, your comment regarding a Federal Statute prohibiting a rape victim to submit to a polygraph is wrong. There is no such statute..in fact, after your post I spoke with a polygraph examiner at a large federal law enforcement agency who stated at polygraph school administering a polygraph to rape victims/suspects was a specific topic of instruction.
Locally, in my jurisdiction, the suspect would have to pass one first before one would be offered to the victim. It is a common interview technique by investigators to request the victim to take a polygraph if her story seems less than credible like in the Duke case. Naturally she can refuse to submit to a test, but that speaks volumes about the victim's story and sets the tone for the investigators regarding future actions.

Anonymous said...

On September 12, 2005, S. 1197, the Violence Against Women Act of ... legislation prohibiting victims of sexual assault from having to submit to polygraph ...

here is the full text (VoWa Act) From DOJ site:

4. With respect to the VAWA requirement concerning polygraph testing prohibition, a state or territory must certify:

that not later than January 5, 2009, their laws, policies, or practices will ensure that no law enforcement officer, prosecuting officer or other government official shall ask or require an adult, youth, or child victim of an alleged sex offense as defined under Federal, tribal, state, territorial, or local law to submit to a polygraph examination or other truth telling device as a condition for proceeding with the investigation of such an offense.

Anonymous said...

uh, it is VAWA. I have been using VoWa..

Anyway, this anti-male legislation should be terminated. Unfortunately, dems are pushing more bills like this using terms like "equality" etc which is just double speak for anti-male, anti-white, anti-christian hate group legislation.

DJ Stillwater said...

Jamil,
Thanks for the info. As I read the law it doesn't actually go into effect until '09, and it seems a bit ambiguous it terms of voluntary/compulsory and how that actually works.
We will be reviewing our policies and modifying them accordingly.
I hear you in terms of the political aspect of the law, but as a law enforcement officer, I want to make sure we're doing the right thing and complying with the statute. Who knows, maybe the Duke case will change the law.
Thanks again.....

Anonymous said...

For once,the NO is doing the right thing. DPD does not look like it can be held accountable - Now this is going after one of the big players,

Anonymous said...

No body will be held accountable except Nifong for bringning the NC justice system under the microscope and poor nurse Tara for having an opinion. You can/t reach the big boys.