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Off-Duty Police Officer Steals iPad From TSA Checkpoint
SpaceCadetTrav writes "A recent arrest report shows that an off-duty police officer from Fullerton, CA was arrested on felony grand theft charges for stealing an iPad at a TSA checkpoint in the Miami International Airport. The theft was captured on video surveillance last month and the officer was tracked down just before boarding her plane."
Looks like she thought she was employed by the TSA.
stuff that matters
*sigh*
No surprise. Cops are people too, with all the usual failings.
At least this bad cop was arrested instead of "protecting their own", but let's see how he is prosecuted.
The fact that they are actually applying the law equally and not regarding the cop as above the law is the surprise.
If only they'd prosecute police brutality, corruption, and intimidation (particularly of anyone with a camera) with such fervency. Then they might stop looking so much like the thugs they're supposed to protect us from.
If that sounds too categorical, that's for a well-founded reason. The cops who don't abuse power themselves but keep silent when their co-workers do the same are equally guilty. They sometimes call it "the blue wall of silence". I call it the blue wall of cowardice. It is most unbecoming of such otherwise brave people.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
You'd have to be mentally defective to steal at an airport. They're the most tightly secured and monitored civilian areas.
No, you just have to think you're above the law. That the cop was wrong about this is the exception and not the rule.
The norm is that cops who break the law, including those who engage in unprovoked violence against innocent civilians, receive a paid vacation known as admistrative suspension.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Is this one of those places where we can expect to see the airport prosecuted for filming a police officer?
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It's a cop from California who got caught doing the crime in Florida. That's why.
The cover-their-own stuff happens in other cases because they broke the rules in their own district, thus it's their own department, staffed by their own co-workers, that has the authority to go after them. Yeah, it sounds like a massive ethics violation to me, too. IMO, when a cop is accused of something, it should be the next higher layer up in charge of the investigation (local cop? state investigation. state cop? federal investigation. federal cop? federal investigation from a different part of the country.) There's a reason people ask "who watches the watchers?".
This is really the only argument that ever need to be voiced when arguing against laws that make it illegal to record police in public:
Who are Police? They are people. Some people do wrong things sometimes. Thus, some police break the law. Making it illegal for others to record the police only makes illegal behavior by corrupt police easier.
In this instance the officer was not on duty, but it shows that just because you are employed as a Police officer or Government agent doesn't mean your morals are always intact.
I had nothing to hide so of course I said yes to the search.
This was your first mistake.