Barely a single day passes without the police of the United States being in the news for all the wrong reasons. In this latest revelation, in Philadelphia a former police officer named Jeffrey Walker has admitted before a jury that it was a usual practice for officers in the police department to “frame up” events in order to intimidate local residents.
According to him, his squad had engaged in a lengthy pattern of civil rights abuses, framing suspects, outright robbery (which included stealing of hundreds of thousands of dollars), and falsifying police reports. He said this occurred too many times for him to even count.
He also said that the squad would often conduct violent raids without a warrant, and then obtain the warrant after the arrest. It seems his squad was bucking the stereotype of police officers targeting Blacks.
Instead, the squad targeted white “college boy” types that the officers could easily intimidate. They also threatened to kill suspects that would not cooperate. One would hope that equal treatment meant better treatment for Blacks, rather than worse treatment for Whites.
In recent months, residents in Philadelphia have protested about the spate of police arrests of people for drunk driving and other minor crimes. They accused the police of being so petty that they had arrested someone simply because he had beat a pair of officers in a basketball game.
And this latest confession by Walker has confirmed their suspicions, that there was something fundamental wrong with how the police were arresting people in the area.
It is said that more than 150 convictions have been overturned, and the lawsuits against the city are piling up because of this latest confession.
But what led to this revelation by Walker? Walker made this known in order to save his own life. After he messed with the very criminals he was operating with, the leader of the criminal gang- Thomas Liciardello (also a police officer) sent Walker texts messages, threatening to kill him. Other officers also sent him similar threats according to investigators.
Liciardello was the de facto boss of the Narcotics Field Unit squad. He and five other cops are also on trial for a list of charges.
But despite the officers being indicted, the public believes that there are still cops in the police department who are still engaging in crimes against innocent citizens.
Independent observers say that these kinds of confessions are increasing the public perception in the US that the police are becoming an enemy of the public instead of being a friend.
It is possible that there are similar practices by cops in other states nationwide. It will be in the best interest of the nation if the Justice Department strengthens its laws to deal with police officers who engage in terrorizing, and brutally killing innocent citizens for no apparent reason.
We are all concerned about organized terrorism, but the recent actions of the police are becoming more dangerous than these terrorists that we always talk about.
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These scumbag cops were cleared of all charges in a federal court, even with cooperation of witnesses… They robbed and framed a few of my friends