http://news.yahoo.com/…

When undercover detectives busted Jose and Maximo Colon last year for selling cocaine at a seedy club in Queens, there was a glaring problem: The brothers hadn’t done anything wrong.

But proclaiming innocence wasn’t going to be good enough. The Dominican immigrants needed proof.

“I sat in the jail and thought … how could I prove this? What could I do?” Jose, 24, recalled in Spanish during a recent interview.

As he glanced around a holding cell, the answer came to him: Security cameras. Since then, a vindicating video from the club’s cameras has spared the brothers a possible prison term, resulted in two officers’ arrest and become the basis for a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.

The officers, who are due back in court June 26, have pleaded not guilty, and New York Police Department officials have downplayed their case.

But the drug corruption case isn’t alone.

On May 13, another NYPD officer was arrested for plotting to invade a Manhattan apartment where he hoped to steal $900,000 in drug money. In another pending case, prosecutors in Brooklyn say officers were caught in a 2007 sting using seized drugs to reward a snitch for information. And in the Bronx, prosecutors have charged a detective with lying about a drug bust captured on a surveillance tape that contradicts her story.

Elsewhere, Philadelphia prosecutors dismissed more than a dozen drug and gun charges against a man last month when a narcotics officer was accused of making up information on search warrants.

The revelations in New York have triggered internal affairs inquiries, transfers of commanders and reviews of dozens of other arrests involving the accused officers. Many drug defendants’ cases have been tossed out. Others have won favorable plea deals.

The misconduct “strikes at the very heart of our system of justice and erodes public confidence in our courts,” said Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson.

Despite the fallout, authorities describe the corruption allegations as aberrations in a city where officers daily make hundreds of drugs arrests that routinely hold up in court. They also note none of the cases involved accusations of organized crews of officers using their badges to steal or extort drugs or money for personal gain — the story line of full-blown corruption scandals from bygone eras.

Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, agrees the majority of narcotics officers probably are clean. But he also believes the city’s unending war on drugs will always invite corruption by some who don’t think twice about framing suspects they’re convinced are guilty anyway.

Prohibition creates a black market and a black market creates a distorted market situation waiting to be exploited. And those who are most incentivized to exploit it are those closest to it with the most power to cover up their actions.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/…

Wisconsin police can attach GPS to cars to secretly track anybody’s movements without obtaining search warrants, an appeals court ruled Thursday.

However, the District 4 Court of Appeals said it was “more than a little troubled” by that conclusion and asked Wisconsin lawmakers to regulate GPS use to protect against abuse by police and private individuals.

As the law currently stands, the court said police can mount GPS on cars to track people without violating their constitutional rights — even if the drivers aren’t suspects.

Officers do not need to get warrants beforehand because GPS tracking does not involve a search or a seizure, Judge Paul Lundsten wrote for the unanimous three-judge panel based in Madison.

Just the next step. In NYC they will track your car using cameras which will read the license plate so why not just tagging each vehicle as they enter the Lincoln tunnel? Some states have considered forcing every state resident to have a GPS to track millage for gas taxes. I’m sure that’s all they intend.

Sounds to me that GPS jammer sales may be going up.

http://www.nj.com/…

South Brunswick police raided a massage parlor in Dayton today, seizing thousands of dollars and accusing the owner and staff of prostitution.

The bust of June Spa II in Liberty Mall on Route 522 comes two years after cops raided the same location three times when it was operated under different names, according to township police.

Because of the recurring issues, police said, they charged the owner of the property, Tobia Scotto Daniello, of North Brunswick, with maintaining a nuisance.

Detectives started looking into the businesses after Mayor Frank Gambatese’s office received an anonymous complaint that it was a front for prostitution, a department news release said.

When officers executed a search warrant, they seized records, nearly $2,000 in cash, records and approximately $5,000 dollars worth of property.

Arrested in the raid were business owner Mi Hee Lee, 56, of Palisades Park; Manager Susan Kim, 58, of Fort Lee; and Ae S. Son, 60, of Flushing, N.Y. They were held on $2,500 bail.

Sounds like a real dangrous group. So proud their business is destroyed, the employees are for the time jobless and these people perhaps will end up in jail.

http://www.philly.com/

THE NARCOTICS officers knew they were being watched on video surveillance moments after they entered the bodega.

Officer Jeffrey Cujdik told store owner Jose Duran that police were in search of tiny ziplock bags often used to package drugs. But, during the September 2007 raid, Cujdik and fellow squad members seemed much more interested in finding every video camera in the West Oak Lane store.

“I got like seven or eight eyes,” shouted Officer Thomas Tolstoy, referring to the cameras, as the officers glanced up. “There’s one outside. There is one, two, three, four in the aisles, and there’s one right here somewhere.”

For the next several minutes, Tolstoy and other Narcotics Field Unit officers systematically cut wires to cameras until those “eyes” could no longer see.

Then, after the officers arrested Duran and took him to jail, nearly $10,000 in cash and cartons of Marlboros and Newports were missing from the locked, unattended store, Duran alleges. The officers guzzled sodas and scarfed down fresh turkey hoagies, Little Debbie fudge brownies and Cheez-Its, he said.

What the officers didn’t count on was that Duran’s high-tech video system had a hidden backup hard-drive. The backup downloaded the footage to his private Web site before the wires were cut.

Although Duran has no video of the alleged looting, he has a 10-minute video that shows the officers using a bread knife, pliers, milk crates and their hands to disable the surveillance system.

The officers didn’t “touch the money with the system looking,” said Duran, who came to the United States from the Dominican Republic 15 years ago and has no prior criminal record in Philadelphia.

They touched “the money after they destroy all the system,” he said.

Read More…

http://www.oaoa.com/…

A police investigation on a fake marijuana grow house may lead to the Odessa American’s website, Odessa Police Lt. Jesse Duarte and Chief Tim Burton suggested.

Duarte said OPD wants to identify posters responding to two previous stories on the raid to see if they can figure out who wrote an anonymous letter alleging a Lotteman Drive house had marijuana growing in it. He said he “couldn’t rule out” the possibility that Kopbusters wrote the letter.

“They’re denying that they wrote the letter, but we have earlier blogs that show that,” Duarte said.

Duarte was one of the investigators involved in the Dec. 4 raid at 232 Lotteman Drive. Duarte and other officers suspected it was a grow house, but when they entered the home they instead found Christmas trees under grow lights and a poster telling them they were being filmed by Kopbusters for a reality TV show.

Kopbusters, according to CEO Barry Cooper, is a new reality TV show that has not yet been available for broadcast but has set out do what they call reverse stings on corrupt narcotics investigators.

Duarte was also involved in the arrest of Yolanda Madden, who Kopbusters claim was framed by police and a police informant who they say planted meth on her. She was convicted of possessing methamphetamine with intent to distribute within 1,000 feet of a park and is serving time in a Bryan federal prison camp.

Duarte said the OPD’s interest in cyber-sleuthing comes from a since-edited post at Kopbusters’ site, nevergetbusted.com, that Duarte said claimed Kopbusters wrote the letter.

Duarte contacted the Odessa American Tuesday to ask how to get the identities of posters on the OA site at oaoa.com.

“We’re following an investigation, and I needed to know some particulars about how your site was set up,” Duarte said.

He didn’t specify any particular screen names he wanted to look up, but he mentioned Kopbusters CEO Barry Cooper and “everyone that is responding” to the two stories.

Neither Duarte, Burton or anyone at the OPD issued a search warrant in connection with the OA website. Burton said however that the site’s posters could be involved in their investigation.

“It (the interest and possible investigation into the OA website) was initiated based upon the events that took place at 232 Lotteman,” Burton said.

Odessa American Editor Laura Dennis said the OA will not release confidential records that indicate e-mail addresses or other information from posters who have registered on the paper’s website to the OPD or anyone else.

“We tell website users that their information is confidential and that it will not be sold or given out. We will stand by that,” Dennis said.

Attorney John Bussian is a First Amendment specialist and is a Freedom Communications attorney. Freedom is the parent company of the Odessa American. Bussian said Tuesday that Freedom recently successfully resisted a subpoena in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., by law enforcement asking the paper to reveal confidential data given to the paper by users who had registered on the paper’s website.

“We have just resisted efforts by law enforcement officers to make the press reveal confidential data provided to us by those posting comments on our websites,” Bussian said. “This is not obstructing justice it is simply asking law enforcement to make the press witnesses of last resort and to demonstrate the things required by the First Amendment before forcing us to reveal these posters,” Bussian said.

Bussian said information given to the OA on the website is confidential.

Yolanda Madden’s father, Raymond Madden, who was in Austin Tuesday, said in a phone interview that he expected the police to want to look into the newspaper’s website. He didn’t seem to be bothered by the prospects.

“They would love to get me,” Madden said. “I mean these guys are desperate.”

Madden hired Kopbusters to help him prove that the OPD framed his daughter. Both Raymond Madden and Kopbusters CEO Cooper claim the OPD raid on the suspected grow house in Odessa proves that the OPD plays fast and loose with the rules because they relied on an anonymous letter to help secure a search warrant.

OPD officials, however, disagree and say that the warrant was legally obtained.

Note the poll on the right.

Here is the story they are referring to.

Barry Cooper called into Free Talk Live Tuesday the 30th, 2008. I’ll post the audio if Ian Bernard posts it tomorrow. Barry has said that the F-bombs in the linked article were fabricated. He apparently told off the reporter after the interview due to him being misrepresented. The reporter reportedly works with the cops.

http://rawstory.com/…

An anonymous tipster appeared to be harrying cops.

It sounded like the plot of the latest TV pseudo-thriller: a rogue cop, a woman scorned, a helpless father, a drug grower, a small town pastor and police that play fast and loose with the constitution, all colliding after an anonymous letter tipped off police to an alleged marijuana farm in a Texas town.

Barry Cooper, a 39-year-old former drug cop turned filmmaker, said that short, poorly written and unattributed letter was the key that tied together motley crew of characters in his latest documentary. A preview of that documentary, a reality show Cooper has dubbed “KopBusters,” is available exclusively from RAW STORY at the bottom of this page.

“I’m leaving Odessa because my boyfriend is out of control,” an anonymous female allegedly wrote to the Odessa police on Dec. 3. “I can’t talk to the police because I have traffic warrants.”

The mysterious tipster claimed 80 marijuana plants were nearing harvest at a small house in the west Texas town, and that officers only had a few days to nab the culprit.

“He does not know I’m telling and thinks I don’t know about him cheating on me,” she continued. “He has been growing pot for a long time and never get caught and he is getting sloppy.”

Based on the tip, police conducted surveillance on the house and determined several of the general statements about the property to be factual.

Within 12 hours, Judge Bill McCoy of the 258th District Court had signed a search warrant based upon the letter and the police department’s periphery follow-up, and the raid was on.

Little did the officers know, inside the house, the flora bathed beneath bright, heat-emitting grow lights wasn’t marijuana but, instead, miniature Christmas trees.

As officers invaded with guns drawn, it quickly became apparent they’d been had. A handwritten poster proclaimed they had just become part of Cooper’s new reality show, ‘KopBusters.’

And bust the cops, he did. According to the Odessa American, Terry Pierce, who also works as an associate police chaplain, denies giving the officers any letter.

However, on Monday the American reported that the local police made a mistake filling out the affidavit. Instead of the police chaplain, First United Pentacostal Church pastor Terry Pugh delivered the letter. Odessa City Manager Richard Morton insisted it was a simple mistake: the letter was allegedly given to officers with “Pastor Terry” written on an open envelope.

“Someone played on my sentiments,” Pugh told the American. “Had I known that, I would have never been involved in it. I thought I was helping the police catch bad guys.”

“It wasn’t just this erroneous affidavit, but also the judge granted a bad warrant based solely on an anonymous tip,” said Cooper. “The Supreme Court has said an anonymous tip is not enough. Maybe we should make a new show called ‘JudgeBusters.’”

Cooper originally planned his first sting for an undisclosed location in Washington state. But after being contacted by Odessa resident Raymond Madden, whose daughter Yolanda was arrested in 2005 for possessing methamphetamine, ‘KopBusters’ shifted course.

“The police got the wrong person,” claims Yolanda’s father on the ‘KopBusters’ trailer. “They thought she was someone else. Once they made the bust, they had to go through with it. You can’t say, ‘Oh, excuse me, we planted drugs.’”

A man who answered the telephone at the Odessa police department declined comment.

The sting was designed, Cooper said, to embarrass the cops that arrested Yolonda, and to put a public face on police neglect of the Fourth Amendment.

Of course, it likely crossed Cooper’s mind that several of his former partners are cops in Odessa. Or that his former narcotics task force was once based there. But the way he describes it, revenge is not atop his list. To Cooper, ‘KopBusters’ is almost a humanitarian mission.

“Free Yolanda!” he yells in the footage. “Ya’ll planted drugs on Yolanda, and we’re gonna get her released and get the crooked cops busted. If you’re a good cop, great. But you’re not. You raided my house, and nothing’s going on.”

The American quoted Cooper saying he believes the police “[got] together to make up this f—ing letter.” Thermal imaging cameras, he claimed to RAW STORY, were used to seek out heat from the grow lamps inside his rented house: an investigatory technique the Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional, but is still frequently used, especially in aerial observation.

“What I’m telling people is that anyone could have sent that letter,” he said. “Anyone who gets pissed off at someone else could have dropped a letter in the offering basket at church, or sent an anonymous tip to police. That’s the point of the court’s logic: to prevent people from triggering false raids.”

RAW STORY pressed him on the letter’s origin, but Cooper stuck to his story.

“No, really, that’s all I’m saying about the letter,” he insisted. “Anybody could have written it. It doesn’t matter who it came from. An anonymous tip is not enough to raid a home.”

And while Cooper may be the most obvious suspected source of the letter, there’s no evidence thus far to tie him to it; a good thing for him, because a false crime report is itself a crime.

Naturally, the Odessa police department is looking into pressing charges. Likewise, Cooper said he plans to file a $10 million federal lawsuit. Both remain to be seen.

Another sting, he boasted, is coming very soon. “I could do it as quickly as 30 days.”

‘KopBusters: Vol. 1′ is set for release in July.

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