Last spring we wrote about police scandals in Contra Costa County California and Antioch. The head of the Central Contra Costa Narcotics Enforcement Team (CNET), and the owner of a private detective agency, both former Antioch police officers were accused of stealing drugs from the CNET safe and selling them to the clients of Chistopher Butler’s private detective agency. Butler was further accused of setting up the husbands of his clients who were seeking divorces for DUI arrests by having the men lured into a bar by an attractive women and then by having Tanabe arrest the men for driving under the influence.

Now it turns out in a new Federal indictment that Butler apparently bribed Tanabe with a gun and cocaine in exchange for making the arrests. This is the same police department that allowed Phillip and Nancy Garrido to live in their midst with kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard and her daughters put away in a back yard shack

Raymond Kelly has a tough job. He’s the New York City police commissioner and he has to keep explaining why his officers keep showing up in court and I don’t mean as witnesses. Last week eight of them were charged with gun smuggling and Friday sixteen were charged with fixing traffic tickets.

There is no evidence that any of the sixteen received any money for any of their actions. Primarily they were getting tickets removed from court files for friends and relatives. The general pattern was that an officer would be approached by a friend. Then the officer would call an officer who had access to the court files or to an officer who knew someone who had access to the files and would ask that the ticket be removed.

The investigation uncovered 800 fixed tickets. The DA charged 300. Many cases included a number of officers. Officer Eugene P. O’Reilly was charged in 250 cases and other officers were charges in over 100 cases.

This has not been a good week for police officers. Yesterday we discussed the denial of an appeal of an officer in Memphis who was sentenced to life plus 255 years for setting up drug deals. He then pretended to arrest the seller while he stole the drugs and money. Today we learn of the arrest of twelve people including eight active duty and retired New York City police officers who bought illegal weapons in New Jersey and transported them to New York.

They are accused of smuggling 20 firearms including three M-16 rifles, a shotgun and 16 handguns across state lines from New Jersey to New York. Most of the weapons had obliterated or altered serial numbers.

In addition the officers are charged with interstate transportation of stolen cigarettes and slot machines. The street value of the smuggled goods exceeded one million dollars.

The officers got the merchandise from an undercover officer in New Jersey. Prior to giving the guns to the officers the FBI made them inoperable but the officers did not know that.

New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg is leading a nationwide movement to remove illegal guns from the streets. It is called Mayors Against Illegal Guns and 600 mayors have joined the effort.

Former Memphis police officer Arthur Sease had a scam going. He would arrange for a third party to make a drug deal with a dealer. In the middle of the deal Sease or a cohort would arrest the dealer, steal the drugs and take any money they found.

He was fired and convicted on 44 counts in Federal Court. Among the charges were violations of conspiracy to deprive another of their civil rights under the color of law, deprivation of civil rights under the color of law, and robbery and extortion under the color of official right interfering with interstate commerce. He was sentence to life plus 255 years ¹.

Well established constitutional law states that when considering the constitutionality of a search or an arrest under the Fourth Amendment you do not consider the intent of the police officers. (See Whren v. United States) Sease had the chutzpa to argue that because the drug deal which he set up was illegal, it made no difference whether his taking of the drugs and the money was for legal reasons or for illegal reasons. If there was no constitutional violation he could not be convicted of depriving the drug dealers of their civil rights.

The Sixth Circuit held that “[u]nlike the officers in Whren, Sease and his co-conspirators were not engaging in bona fide law enforcement activities. Instead, they were using the appearance of law enforcement activities as an element of their conspiracy.”

The issue in Whren involved the exclusionary rule where officers have to make snap decisions in difficult situations. Here there were no snap decisions, Sease had everything planned out. Furthermore the deprivation of rights statutes require that the court consider the intent of the officer. To obtain a conviction the government must show that the defendant “acted with a corrupt, personal, and pecuniary purpose.” As a result the court upheld the conviction and Sease is going to spend the rest of his life in prison. ²

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Richard Wells pulled over Mark Anthony Young, an African-American probation officer, for failure to use his seat belt. He asked Young for his license, proof of insurance and registration. Young was not able to find his registration immediately so Wells asked him to continue looking while he went to his motor cycle to prepare the citation. When Young found the registration he got out of the truck and took the registration over to Wells. Wells ordered him back into his truck. Young refused to get into the truck and sat down on the curb. Wells, without warning, approached Young from the rear and pepper sprayed him. Young stood up and Well hit him a number of times with his baton.

Young sued Wells and the County of Los Angeles claiming excessive use of force and false imprisonment. The trial court granted Well’s motion for summary judgement. Young appealed. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the grant of summary judgement as to the false imprisonment claim but it granted the appeal as to the excessive use of force claim.

Considering the relatively minor offenses Young was accused of (failing to use his seat belt and interfering with a peace officer) and the lack of danger to the officer or others the appellate court found that the use of pepper spray and the baton was excessive.

On the other hand the court found that the arrest of Young was legitimate since he failed to comply with Wells’ order to get into the truck and therefore the summary judgement as to the false imprisonment was appropriate.

More and more police departments are using body cameras. Body cameras are attached to a police officer’s uniform and allow them to video arrests, searches and confrontations with the public.

Over 700 police departments in the United States now use the small cameras which can be attached to the officers’ uniforms or to the dashboard of the police car.

If used properly, the body cameras serve many purposes. They help to exonerate the innocent and force guilty pleas from the guilty. They are often used in police disciplinary actions either to support disciplinary actions or to justify an officer’s actions. In DUI’s they are provide valuable “testimony” in the form of a video of sobriety tests or driving behavior.

But to be helpful they must be used properly. They must be turned on at the beginning of an incident and left on until they are no longer needed. They must be download promptly and they must not be manipulated.

Former Antioch, California police officers ¹ Norman Wielsch, most recently head of the Central Contra Costa Narcotics Enforcement Team (CNET), and Christopher Butler, who now has a private detective agency along with San Ramon police officer, Louis Lombardi, were charged with stealing drugs from the CNET safe and selling them to Butler’s clients and to confidential informants. Lombardi was a member of CNET at the time of the thefts. Then Butler, and former Danville Officer Stephen Tanabe, were charged with setting up spouses of Butler’s clients to be arrested on DUI’s to dirty them up for the divorce proceedings. Now Butler is accusing his former friend, Wielsch of running a brothel in Pleasant Hill in 2009-2010.

Boy, these cops must count for half of the crime in Contra Costa County.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about two former Antioch, California police officers, Norman Wielsch, who was the head of the Central Contra Costa Narcotics Enforcement Team (CNET), and Christopher Butler, who now has a private detective agency. Wielsch was accused of providing drugs seized by CNET to Butler who sold them to his clients. They split the profits.

Also accused of narcotics and weapons violations was another former Antioch police, officer, Stephen Tanabe, who was working for the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Department. As the story went Butler represented women seeking divorces from their husbands. He would arrange for good looking women to get the husband drunk at a local bar. Then Tanabe would arrest the husbands for DUI’s in order to dirty them in the divorce proceedings.

I suspected at the time that Tanabe was being paid by Butler for his services. However I did not have any evidence of such I still don’t have any evidence but apparently the Contra Costa County District Attorney does. They filed charges alleging three counts of obstruction of justice, making false arrests and selling steroids. They say that on at least one occasion Tanabe received money from Butler for making an arrest.

As a result of the investigation fifteen cases have been dismissed and five cases have not been charged, either because the charges were no longer credible or because Wielsch and Tanabe are unavailable to testify.

Tanabe has resigned from the Sheriff’s Department and is fighting the charges. If he is guilty it is hard to think of a more corrupt way to tarnish his former badge than taking money to arrest people who have been set up for private gain. ¹

Criminal defense attorneys, and I suspect district attorneys and judges, have long doubted consent searches. In a consent search the police avoid getting a search warrant by obtaining consent of the person being searched or of the person in possession of the house or car. But these searches are easy to fabricate. There are often no witnesses and its the officer’s word against the defendant’s.

But there is little we can do. The question at trial is not the truth but who can prove their case. We know that the jury is generally more likely to believe a police officer (or five police officers) who testify that our poor 19 year old African American or Latino consented to the search than to believe our client when he or she says they did not consent to the search. This is true even in the senseless situation where the officers find rock cocaine or heroin viewable on the bed or dresser.

Certainly not all consent searches are phoney. People don’t always do wise things.There is no requirement that the police tell a person that they need not consent and people, particularly those from abroad who are not used to the Bill of Rights often consent. Whether the consent is real or not it is often followed by a plea bargain because the police office, who is a professional witness can convince the court and a jury that the defendant consented to the search.

But with the advent of videos things may change. The San Francisco Public Defender’s office has four video tapes taken at the Henry Hotel of police officers entering rooms without consent and later filing police reports in which they state under oath that they received consent to the search. The officers involved are members of the Southern Station plainclothes unit. The District Attorney has already dropped 57 cases as a result of the allegations. An investigation of the unit and its sergeant is occurring. These are serious allegations. Filing a false police report is a misdemeanor and perjury is a felony. If true, these charges are significant violations of people’s Fourth Amendment rights and justly call into question the trustworthiness of numerous other investigations conduct by the unit and by other officers.

The story started out with two former Antioch, California police officers, Norman Wielsch, who was the head of the Central Contra Costa Narcotics Enforcement Team (CNET), and Christopher Butler, who now has a private detective agency, being arrested on drug charges. It was alleged that Wielsch stole drugs from CNET and provided them to Butler who sold them and presumably shared the profits. Twenty-eight felony charges are pending against Wielsch and Butler. Dirty cops–big deal. But as the story has evolved it turns out that Butler represented some women in child custody matters. In order to get custody for their children and to blacken the fathers, he hired decoys to get the men drunk. Then he arranged for a third former Antioch police officer, Stephen Tanabe, now employed by the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Department and assigned to Daville to be waiting near the bar and to arrest the fathers for driving under the influence. Tanabe has not been charged with incidents involving the DUI’s. Rather he has been charged with drug and weapons offenses.

CNET’s operations have been suspended pending a state audit.

Wielsch, Butler and Tanabe are now out on bail. But at a bail hearing for Butler the district attorney played a video of Butler kidnapping a boy, with Wielsch present, and stealing 4000 Xanax pills found in the boy’s room to scare him from being involved with drugs. In the video Butler and several of his employees impersonated police officers. Deputy district attorney Jun Fernandez said they may be charged with kidnapping. The Xanax was found when officers searched Butler’s possessions after he was arrested.

Paying to have people arrested is about as corrupt as you can get.