Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Sgt Corey Buckner Guilty of 4 Violations of Conduct

A Kentucky State Police trooper is dismissed after the KSP trial board finds one of its own guilty of four violations of their standards of conduct.

The trial board convened yesterday afternoon in Franfort and found Sargeant Corey Buckner guilty on four violations.

Those include: honesty and conformance to law which were both class a violations, conformance to law, a Class B violation, and responsibility of ranking officers also a Class B violation.

The charges concerned misconduct involving certain Kentucky State Police Bowling Green post officer training records.

The trial board fixed Sgt. Buckner's punishment at dismissal for the two class a violations of the standards of conduct for which he was found guilty and at suspension for 20 days for each of the two Class B violations.

Officer Jamel Dennis Charged with Assault

The 12-lane thoroughfare is often called the Boulevard of Death, but for one short-fused police officer, the authorities say, it became a road of rage.

On the afternoon of Nov. 17, a civilian, Geoffrey Hollinden, 41, was crossing Queens Boulevard near 109th Street in Forest Hills when he was nearly hit by a car, the authorities say. Enraged, Mr. Hollinden pounded on the car, a 2006 Infiniti, as it passed.

Suddenly the car pulled over, and out sprang a large and irate man — identified by the authorities as Jamel Dennis, 32, an off-duty Brooklyn narcotics officer. Officer Dennis, who is 6-foot-6, grabbed Mr. Hollinden, the authorities say, dragged him to the boulevard’s service road, lifted him to shoulder height and slammed him to the ground, knocking him unconscious.

Mr. Hollinden was hospitalized for three days.

“As a motorist — and more so, as a police officer — the defendant should have known better than to allegedly take matters into his own hands and elevate a minor traffic dispute into a felonious assault,” the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, said in a statement on Tuesday.

Officer Dennis was charged on Monday night with second-degree assault and released on his own recognizance. He is scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 15 and faces up to seven years in prison. Reached by telephone on Tuesday, he declined to comment. A man who identified himself as Officer Dennis’s father said, “They railroaded my son.”

It is not the first time that a New York police officer has been accused of road-rage assault. In August, two transit officers, Michelle Anglin, 37, and Koleen Robinson, 24, were charged with pummeling a man in the head and face with a baton and a gun after he pulled up alongside them in the Bronx with his side door open, nearly scraping their sport utility vehicle.

The Queens Boulevard episode provided yet more grist for the road’s dangerous reputation. The 8- to 12-lane street is one of the main arteries linking Queens to Manhattan; it also divides neighborhoods with a fast-moving river of traffic that some pedestrians find hard to cross.

Between 1993 and 2000, 72 pedestrians were killed along the road. Since 2004, safety improvements have led to a decrease in the number of collisions, but drivers and pedestrians still find the boulevard nerve-wracking, and accidents there still claim lives — two this year.

According to the district attorney, Officer Dennis fled after assaulting Mr. Hollinden. Two days later, Mr. Brown said, Officer Dennis went to the 112th Precinct station and identified himself as an officer in the Brooklyn North Narcotics Division. He said a man had pushed him during a traffic dispute in the area and asked whether anyone had filed a complaint. He also pointed out scuff marks on the back of his car to an officer from the Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau, which investigated the case.

District Attorney Brown said that the incident came to light because an eyewitness jotted down the license plate number of the defendant’s car. Mr. Hollinden sustained a cut in his head that required five staples, cranial bleeding and a herniated disc, according to the district attorney.

“The guy escaped the car, but not the driver,” said Kevin Ryan, the district attorney’s spokesman.

Alexis Chaparro Get's Only 10 Years for Murder

Outraged shouts echoed in a Riverhead courtroom Wednesday after a New York City Police Academy instructor pleaded guilty to killing his fiancee in a deal that will send him to prison for 10 years.

Alexis Chaparro, 28, had initially been charged with second-degree murder after police found Sonia Garcia, 27, also a New York Police Department officer, shot to death in the bedroom of their Bay Shore home last year. The maximum penalty for second-degree murder is 25 years to life in prison. Chaparro pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter.

Members of Garcia's family reacted angrily to what they called a lenient sentence, some weeping audibly in court, others shaking their heads or clutching their hair. At one point, the victim's brother Ramon Hernandez, 32, shouted expletives and lunged at Chaparro until a scrum of family members and court officers hustled him out the door.

This came shortly after Chaparro admitted that after being roused from sleep on the fatal night, he pulled his service pistol from beneath his pillow and fired it.

"What did you fire it at?" Assistant District Attorney Janet Albertson asked him.

"A shadow," Chaparro said.

Albertson then asked if he discovered that he'd just shot his fiancee.

"Yes," Chaparro murmured.

Outside court, Garcia's sister, Evelyn Hernandez, 26, of Park Slope, said Chaparro "basically got away with murder."

Hernandez said she now believes Chaparro killed Garcia because she discovered he was in the midst of a homosexual love affair.

"My sister walked in on him with another man," Hernandez said. "That's why she's dead."

But Albertson said police found no indication this was true. "After three months of investigation, there is no evidence to support that scenario," she said outside court.

Chaparro's lawyer, William Keahon of Islandia, declined to comment outside court. Keahon has consistently argued that his client only remembers falling asleep the night his fiancee was shot and killed, and that he had worried about burglars entering their home in the days leading up to her death.

Albertson called the plea deal the best the district attorney's office could do considering the shifting legal definition of the specific charge handed up by the grand jury, second-degree murder by depraved indifference.

Early in the case, the district attorney's office had presented two charges to the grand jury: intentional murder and depraved indifference murder. It indicted Chaparro only on the depraved indifference charge, accusing him of acting with such reckless disregard for human life that he merited the same blame as a person who'd acted intentionally.

It was a hard charge to prove given the facts of the case, Albertson said, and so "both sides gave up something to get something."

Officer Ryan Warme Could Face Death Penalty for Raping 2 Women


A Niagara Falls police officer could face the death penalty if he's convicted of raping two women and violating their civil rights. Officer Ryan Warme entered a not guilty plea in U.S. District Court in downtown Buffalo Wednesday afternoon. He's charged with intentionally violating the civil rights of two women by sexually assaulting them, cocaine trafficking, and carrying a firearm in relation to one of the civil rights violations and the cocaine trafficking violation.

Authorities say the 27-year-old Warme, who joined the Niagara Falls police force in August 2005, committed many of his crimes while on duty. "I'd like to assure everyone, especially the citizens of Niagara Falls, that the actions of Mr. Ryan Warme were the actions of one individual and we have absolutely no facts to dispute that," says Niagara Falls Chief of Police John Chella.

Top officials in the NFPD were first tipped off to alleged misdeeds by Officer Warme a couple of years ago when a woman called to complain about him, but they say they didn't have enough evidence to pursue charges at the time. By July of this year though the complaints against Warme were piling up and Niagara Falls police enlisted the help of federal officers. Their investigation led to the arrest of Warme last night without incident at his Ninth Street home in the Falls.

"The one thing I really want to get out there is his actions may be shocking to the conscious of most people but I think what people need to take into consideration is the rest of the men and women of this department did not cover for him," says Det. Lt. Kelly Rizzo, NFPD.

The criminal complaint against Warme filed in U.S. District Court alleges Warme told one of the rape victims: "If she ever told anyone he would take her to the "res" (Indian reservation) and shoot her". He also allegedly told the victims his father was a police captain and no one would believe that he raped them. Gordon Warme was a decorated captain who served in the NFPD for many years and retired a few years ago. "In no way should the unacceptable behavior of Ryan Warme reflect on the fine career Captain Warme had," says Chief Chella, "I would hope that the public would not judge the father for the sins of the son."

Authorities think there could be other victims of Ryan Warme and they want victims to know it is safe to call Niagara Falls police and report a crime.

Watch the story

More Information: http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/512028.html

Sgt. Andy Cody Charged with Simple Assault




Weaverville Police Sergeant Andy Cody, 38, has resigned after he was charged with simple assault. Madison County deputies responded to a disturbance at his home around 4 am, Tuesday.

Officer Cody and Angela Tweed, 38, living together, unmarried at the residence, were involved in a domestic altercation. After Officer Cody’s release from jail, he obtained a domestic violence protection order against Tweed.

In a statement Cody stated that Tweed hit him in the head, face, and made threats of violence.

Officer Cody has been a Weaverville officer since 2002.

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On 12/12/08 Officer Andy Cody,took his own life rather than face the allegations against him.

15 Officers Charged with Conspiracy and other Criminal Activities

CHICAGO

Duffel bags stuffed with cocaine were delivered by plane to an out-of-the-way suburban airport while two sheriff's officers provided security. A police officer stood by to guard the cash and keep out the riffraff at a poker game where $100,000 changed hands. And a drug dealer was told squad cars marked "sheriff" and "sheriff's police" might be available on a "freelance" basis to provide protection for his deliveries.

Such tales of law enforcement gone awry emerged in court papers Tuesday as federal prosecutors unveiled a series of elaborate sting operations aimed at officers who hired out to ride shotgun for drug deals and other criminal activities.

Fifteen officers and two other men who had pretended to be law enforcement officers were charged with conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine or heroin or both.

But the most spectacular pretending was done by the federal agents themselves.

The pilots of the airplane were not drug runners but undercover agents. So were the gamblers who busily played hand after hand of high-stakes poker — all for show.

The drug broker who squired the officers to the airport to pick up the duffel bags was an agent. So was the drug dealer who stuffed the bags into his Mercedes-Benz.

U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said he was dismayed to find that so many law enforcement officers had "sold out their badge."

"When drug dealers deal drugs, they ought to be afraid of the police — not turn to them for help," Fitzgerald said at a news conference.

Officials paid homage to an unnamed FBI agent who moved into a business in Harvey more than a year ago and set up shop as a drug broker. He soon attracted the attention of police and the corruption grew, authorities said.

They said the agent was sent in undercover because there had been reports of police corruption over the last several years in southern Cook County, including the Harvey police department. An investigation into allegations of robbery, extortion, narcotics offenses and weapons distribution is ongoing, officials said.

Those charged include 10 Cook County sheriff's correctional officers, four Harvey police officers and one Chicago police officer.

Of the 17 defendants, 14 were arrested or surrendered Tuesday and were being immediately brought before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Mason. Two sheriff's officers are on active duty with Army National Guard units in Afghanistan, and warrants were issued for their arrest.

If convicted of conspiracy to possess and distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine or one kilogram of heroin, the defendants would face a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years and a maximum of life. The maximum fine would be $4 million.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart called the alleged behavior "absolutely reprehensible."

"The responsibility of watching over jail inmates is an important one and it's a shame these men didn't take that responsibility more seriously," he said in a statement.

Each of those charged has been suspended with pay pending a hearing next week, Dart said. "That step will then lead to a request for termination," he said.