Illinois cop that committed suicide...

[300UGUY]

This may not be the right forum for this, so if it needs to be zapped, I understand.

I have been reading the news of the cop in Illinois that committed suicide. Reading his list of crimes and unethical behavior is pretty shocking to me. It leaves me with a bunch of questions:

How did he ever get to be a cop?

Really big - How the heck did he stay employed? Drunk driving, fights with civilians, sexual harassment, theft, fraud of several types, improper evidence procedure with drugs, weapons, money. Not to mention conspiracy and solicitation of murder. He was a criminal.

His coworkers had to know. Are they all dirty too?

If you hang out in strip clubs, take expensive vacations, have girl friends + wife, that is gonna cost way above a normal salary. His buddies had to know he was dirty. His boss even admitted that he thought he was stealing from the explorer program, but didn't know how or how much.

Last, this is a small town cop. Not exactly a Miami Vice neighborhood.

How many more are out there, just like him?

 

[Kenneth in Texas]

How many more are out there, just like him?

probably more than we can imagine.

 

[bumperm]

Obviously there are some bad cops. I believe the vast majority are good, honest, hard working, doing their best to serve the communities they work in.

To say co-workers would have known is a bit of a stretch. It all depends on how good a job of being a bad cop he did.

I was a cop in Oakland, CA for 10 years back in the 70's. It was only after they lowered the hiring standards, to get more minority police officers hired, that we had an up-tick in cops being arrested for criminal behavior. There was actually a small gang of cops dealing in stolen Porches and engines etc.

 

[Ed of all trades]

Back in the 80's one of the firemen in my small vol. department went to NY for some reason. He was speeding and got pulled over. The officer saw his FD badge in his wallet and asked about it. My friend said "I am a fireman in a small Va Town." The officer said Ok have a nice day and started to leave. My friend asked what changed and the officer said You are a fireman "I can't write you a ticket" If my bosses found out I would get in trouble. My friend said that is wrong and I demand you write me a ticket and the officer got in his car and left.
My friend came to the meeting and was MAD, even though it had saved him a ticket he knew it was a wrong system and he was mad.
Andy told Barney that he was supposed to set an example for everyone else but instead many officers have lived just outside of the law for years. Driving fast, not getting tickets for wrecks, small things. With that going on it is just a matter of time before some take it much farther than that.
The problem is that most of the officers are great men doing a very hard job that has been made much harder by a few who should have never been giver the title officer in the first place.
I want to thank all of the Officers who risk their lives so we can sleep at night and go through the day in piece. Ed

 

[drizler]

You work in LE long enough you are going to find a double standard among the ranks. It's probably the same in any work environment but I pretty much know just the LE workplace. You have the regular worker bees and then you have the stars. The stars seem to me like the never satisfied types who always need to have daddy's eye. You can just feel it when you are working around a couple of them and some manager comes around. May be you could call them show offs or something like that. Anyways they always seem to be the ones to get their names in the book for doing something spectacular and it's often because they just have to get involved to further their reputation. I never much liked their company and many others felt the same unless they wanted to bask in the other guys glory in hope of furthering their own career.
One thing you notice working around these folks (and the women are just as bad as the men) is how arrogant and self entitled they are. They love to get their own way and are quite demanding about getting it. Management of course loves them because they "put on the show" and the statistics they create makes the managers look good. When they get into trouble, often in the process of being a bit heavy handed you can bet management will do everything they can to get them off the hook. Sometimes they have something on a manager too. After long enough they become very entitled and often do much as they please and I suppose as time goes on they just get bolder until they run up against something that they can't get out of. With women the old sleep their way to the top seems to happen regularly too and don't think for a minute that they won't use blackmail then of course when they file an EEO that helps kick them into the protected species category. That's one shield they can hide behind forever.
There, with all that in mind it sort of makes sense how cops like that puke can do the things they do. I figure it's one of those egocentric things where they feel they can do anything just because it's them which in their mind makes it right. They perceive themselves as the center of the universe and why not? Just like a superstar athlete or movie star they take on that aura of invincibility right up until they either become the hypocrite boss you wish would die, I have seen my share of those, or they implode on themselves. The latter seems in my experience to happen VERY rarely. Now does anybody wonder how these people can possibly end up where they do? Not me, it's just too bad more of them don't get taken to task. It's pretty sick isn't it?

 

[300UGUY]

Obviously there are some bad cops. I believe the vast majority are good, honest, hard working, doing their best to serve the communities they work in.

To say co-workers would have known is a bit of a stretch. It all depends on how good a job of being a bad cop he did.

I was a cop in Oakland, CA for 10 years back in the 70's. It was only after they lowered the hiring standards, to get more minority police officers hired, that we had an up-tick in cops being arrested for criminal behavior. There was actually a small gang of cops dealing in stolen Porches and engines etc.

When they found him passed out drunk behind the wheel of a running truck, he didn't get popped for a DUI? It took a couple of cops to wrestle him out of his truck. ? A civilian would have gotten a DUI, had to go to court, lost his license, spent thousands on the process.

When he got in fights with bouncer's at strip clubs, he didn't go to jail for that? Normal guy goes to jail, probably on a assault charge.

His buddies didn't know?

 

[Bird]

As long as the only place from which we have to recruit new police officers is the human race, we'll have some bad ones; just as we have with doctors, lawyers, school teachers, and every other profession. You just hope you have people at the top who try to get rid of the bad apples as soon as possible. In my nearly 25 years in law enforcement, I figure I've seen the best and the worst. The bad ones think they're smarter than the other officers and can get away with whatever they want to get away with. And sometimes they do for quite a long time. Those who get away with it for exceptionally long times make the national news, just as this guy did.

 

[300UGUY]

I think being in a small department, and little oversight really led to this situation. He was afraid of a village admin, that was going to audit his books. I was the treasurer of my lodge for 3 years, I had to explain every penny every month! I can't see how anyone could go for years without a audit.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Just one more case of how untogether our society has become. Or dysfunctional and lacking common sense. I saw a documentary the other night about lapses in National Security as far as security clearances go. Just another system that does not work!

As far as cops, I believe them to be some of the biggest wackos and criminals out there. But the Ego usually seems to be their biggest issue!

 

[NorTracNY]

I believe it's a mentality issue. Any "team" is taught to protect the team. If it's not clear that part of protecting the team involves, protecting the integrety, morallity, and reputation of the team it can be very easy to just protect all the members and hide their flaws. I believe it's also more common that it should be that bad cops will just transfer to other departments so they don't deal with the issue.

I'm aware of one newbie that pulled over a drunk cop from a neighboring town one night. He thought he was being nice by calling the other town to have someone pick the guy up. Well he was chewed out pretty bad for raising attention to it. He was told he should have just let the drunk drive home.

I think we all agree that most cops are good hardworking people serving the community, but the mentallity they need to do their job safetly can be a detriment at other times. It's clearly a very difficult job.