Woman falsely arrested for DUI files federal lawsuit
by Chris Patterson
MILWAUKEE -- A woman is filing
a federal lawsuit after a Milwaukee County Sheriff's deputy allegedly arrested
her for drunk driving to cover up his fault in a car accident.
According to federal documents,
Tanya Weyker was traveling south on Howell Ave. when Deputy Joseph Quiles drove
through a stop sign resulting in an accident. Weyker's car spun out of control,
and struck a tree in a median barrier.
The lawsuit filed in federal
court claims three other Milwaukee County Sheriff's deputies, Scott Griffin,
Byron Terry, and Sergeant Matthew Paradise, responded to this accident the
night of February 20, 2013. The lawsuit alleges all officers conspired to cover
up Quiles' role in the accident by having Weyker falsely arrested for driving
while intoxicated.
The federal lawsuit says
Griffin, Terry and Paradise failed to intervene or prevent Weyker's arrest. The
lawsuit also says they all willfully "ignored or disregarded"
evidence indicating Quiles was at fault for this accident. Attorneys say all
responding deputies filed false and inaccurate information saying Weyker was
driving drunk.
Milwaukee County Sheriff David
Clarke is also mentioned in this lawsuit. It says Sheriff Clarke became aware
of the video that proved Quiles was at fault in the February 20th accident. The
video was made available to Sheriff Clarke within one week of the incident.
The Milwaukee County District
Attorney's Office declined to issue any charges against Weyker after blood
tests showed she was completely sober. Assistant DA Ron Dauge noted, "A
MCSO squad t-bones the driver's car as she is heading south on Howell Avenue.
The squad failed to stop/yield to an auto in the active traffic lane. Although
the defendant admits that she was driving 45 in a 35 (mph) zone, that speed
isn't excessive, just a violation of the speed limit. Defendant was cooperative
with police and consented to blood test. Blood test shows no alcohol, no drugs
at all. So no evidence of impairment. Ticket was also written for 'imprudent
speed.' 45 in 35 might be in excess of posted limit, but doesn't appear to be
"imprudent." Further, driver's car suffered significant damage, both
driver and passenger suffered injuries and were admitted into Froedtert as a
consequence of the collision."
Former police officer charged with DUI makes initial court appearance
Written by Kevin Robison
CEDAR CITY – Jed Prisbrey
Imlay, 32, appeared for his initial hearing at the 5th District Court in Cedar
City on Tuesday. Imlay resigned from the Cedar City Police Department June 16
after being charged with driving under the influence while off duty – allegedly
with a child in the vehicle – and leaving the scene of an accident after
crashing in the parking lot of a little league baseball complex.
Imlay entered not guilty pleas
through his attorney, Douglas Terry, to charges of driving under the influence
of alcohol with a minor in the vehicle, a class-A misdemeanor, and leaving the
scene of an accident that involved property damage, a class-B misdemeanor.
Prosecution is being handled by
the Beaver County Attorney’s Office in order to avoid a conflict of interest
with Iron County.
A review hearing is set for
Aug. 12 at 9 a.m.
Persons arrested or charged are
presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law or as otherwise decided
by a trier-of-fact.
Former Isle of Palms cop charged with pawning evidence
By RACHAEL MYERS LOWE
CHARLESTON, SC — A former Isle
of Palms police officer was arrested Tuesday and charged with misconduct in
office and breach of trust, the State Law Enforcement Division announced in a
news release.
Dawn Caldwell, 45, worked in
the evidence room at the Isle Of Palms Police Department. Between 2009 and
2013, the SLED warrant charges, Capt. Caldwell took items from the evidence
room worth more than $2,000 and pawned them at a local pawn shop. She was also
charged with pawning her department issued Glock pistol on two occasions.
The SC Law Enforcement Division
investigated the case at the request of the Isle of Palms Police Department.
Caldwell was being held at the
Charleston County Detention Center on Tuesday.
Ex-cop tied to suitcase deaths suspended 3 times
WEST ALLIS, Wis. - Newly
released records show that a former Wisconsin police officer charged with
dumping two bodies stuffed into suitcases along a highway had a lengthy
disciplinary record, including three suspensions and four reprimands.
Fifty-two-year-old Steven
Zelich is charged with two counts of hiding a corpse in Walworth County.
Authorities say he's also a suspect in the women's deaths, although no homicide
charges have been filed.
Zelich worked for the West
Allis Police Department from February 1989 until he resigned in August 2001.
Records obtained Wednesday by
The Associated Press show he was suspended twice in 2001 for lying - for 20
days in May and two days in April.
He also received a one-day
suspension in 1996 for failing to report an accident in which he was involved
while on duty.
Highway workers discovered two
suitcases containing female remains June 5 in the Town of Geneva, some 50 miles
southwest of Milwaukee. Police identified one woman as Laura Simonson, 37, of
Farmington, Minnesota. The second woman was identified through dental records
as Jenny Gamez from Cottage Grove, Oregon.
Why Cops Get Away With Rape
By Paula Mejia
Truthout revealed last week
that there is no organization keeping good data on sexual violence perpetrated
by police. Universities are being pressured by students, alumni and human
rights groups for more transparency regarding sexual assault cases on campuses,
but sexual misconduct committed by on-duty police officers goes vastly
underreported. Truthout also says that when police-perpetrated sexual violence
is reported, shorter sentences or dismissed cases are more common.
Cases of police-perpetrated
molestation, harassment sexual assault, rape and molestation have been all over
the headlines recently. A former Washington, D.C., officer admitted that he
forced teenagers to work as escorts out of his apartment, while a former
Wisconsin police officer was arrested for murdering two women and stuffing them
into suitcases. An officer in Texas was arrested on domestic violence charges
and was recorded saying that his wife would benefit from being “cut by a razor,
set on fire, beat half to death and left to die.” A former Georgia officer was
sentenced to 35 years on child molestation charges after he forced himself on
two girls and a woman while on duty.
Jennifer Marsh, vice president
of victims services at the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, told
Truthout that her organization receives multiple reports of police-perpetrated
sexual crimes each month via its anonymous hotline. Marsh is unsure how many of
these cases result in an arrest, and how many times charges are dismissed
because the officer’s word is taken over the victim’s, partly because of the
power dynamics in such situations and partly because of how the rapists select
their targets.
“[Officers] tend to choose victims who would
lack so-called credibility in the eyes of other law enforcement, whether it was
somebody who was engaged in sex work or whether it is somebody who was
intoxicated or who was using drugs, and then they use that justification for
why that person cannot be believed,” Marsh said.
“Unfortunately, this is more
the norm than the exception,” she continues. “It’s hard to do research and find
reliable statistics on a topic that nobody wants to speak about.” An unofficial
study by the Cato Institute’s National Police Misconduct Reporting Project
found that sexual misconduct is the second greatest of all civilian complaints
nationwide against police officers, at 9.3 percent in 2010. The organization
noted that 354 of the 618 officers under investigation for sexual offenses were
accused of engaging in nonconsensual sexual acts, and just over half of the 354
cases involved minors.
Within the criminal justice
system, sex offenders are difficult to prosecute, but officers accused of
sexual crimes are even tougher to convict. According to a U.S. Department of
Justice survey, 60 percent of sexual assaults go unreported, only 3 percent of
rapists will serve time in prison, and the numbers for cops are nonexistent.
The study notes that these cops are typically unsupervised and, if arrested, often
have to recount the crime to, well, other cops. The truth is that little
accountability exists for law enforcement officials.
Consider the case of Nicole
Smith. In a report, she describes in graphic detail the horrible violence she
endured when a police officer raped her over 20 years ago. “He just started
beating the shit out of me, and he had a gun,” she said. “I remember him
telling me, ‘You’re never going home’.... I could feel the gun on my face.” The
officer was off duty when the rape happened (the two were briefly dating at the
time). But a study conducted by Bowling Green State University finds that more
than half of reported police-perpetrated rapes between 2005 and 2007 occurred
when an officer was on duty.
Smith isn’t sure if she would
have talked to the police at all had a friend not taken her to the hospital
after the attack. “My paranoia was beyond belief when I was talking to the
police,” she said. When Smith pressed charges, the officer was already standing
trial on charges of raping and assaulting another woman. That case was dropped,
and Smith’s case ended in a plea bargain for a life sentence. Smith’s rapist
was deemed eligible for parole after an initial five years, then again every
three years, although she said he has a good chance of getting out as early as
September 2015 due to recent changes in the state’s parole board operations.
The Department of Justice’s
Office on Violence Against Women funded an initiative by the International
Association of Chiefs of Police to develop policies and training standards to
prevent police-perpetrated sexual misconduct. The American Prospect reports,
however, that the organization fails to track progress within its local
departments. In 2000, the Department of Justice and the International
Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training unveiled the
National Decertification Index, a database compiled to prevent decertified
officers from becoming rehired due to misconduct. The most recent version of
the index contains reports from only 37 states.
Spokane International Airport police officer accused of child rape
SPOKANE, Wash. -- The Spokane
County Prosecutor’s Office is pursing incest and child rape charges against an
Airport Police officer.
Spokane Airports released a
statement Wednesday. It said the officer had been suspended without pay pending
the outcome of an investigation.
Airport officials said the
part-time reserve commissioned Airport Police officer, had been employed since
2002.
KREM 2 News has not released
the suspect’s name in order to protect the identity of the victim.
Wife had accused killer policeman of rape
By Jenny Johnson, Salt Lake
City
A Utah police officer who
killed his wife, their two children, his mother-in-law and then himself
received text messages from his wife just hours earlier threatening to leave
him and take their children and confronting him for raping her, documents show.
A Spanish Fork Police report
shows Joshua Boren and his wife exchanged heated texts the night and morning
before the January killings.
In them, Kelly Boren confronted
her husband about raping her and told him their marriage was over. The couple
had been separated.
Joshua Boren’s therapist told
authorities that Boren drugged his wife and videotaped himself sexually
assaulting her on more than one occasion.
Kelly Boren learned of the
assaults when she discovered the tapes in 2013, said Spanish Fork Police Lt.
Matt Johnson. She did not report the assaults to police because she didn’t want
to ruin her husband’s career, the report says.
The night before she was
killed, Kelly Boren brought up the alleged sexual assault again, texting the
word “rape” to her husband four times, the documents show.
The next morning, Kelly Boren
told her husband she would take the children, prompting Joshua Boren to reply
by text: “Don’t involve the kids, they are innocent.”
Joshua Boren had worked for the
Lindon Police Department for only three months. Before that, he was a Utah
County sheriff’s deputy for seven years. He used the service weapon when he
killed his family members and himself, authorities said. Toxicology reports
show he had no drugs or alcohol in his system.
Police said the state medical
examiner confirmed what investigators believed: Joshua Boren shot his wife
Kelly Boren, 32, his 55-year-old mother-in-law, Marie King; and his two
children, 7-year-old Joshua “Jaden” and 5-year-old Haley, before killing
himself.
The shooting happened at the
family’s home in Spanish Fork, a city of about 37,000 located 80km south of
Salt Lake City.
NYC officer pleads not guilty in suburban shooting
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — A New York
City policeman has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder, assault
and drunken driving.
Suspended Officer Brendan
Cronin is accused in connection with the apparently random shooting attack on
two men in a car at a suburban intersection on April 29. Cronin was off-duty.
The passenger in the car was
hit six times. The driver, who was not hit, was at Thursday's arraignment.
He said he wanted Cronin to see
his face. He said Cronin saw only the back of his head during the shooting.
A judge signed orders of
protection demanding that Cronin stay away from the two men. They have served
notice that they plan to sue Cronin and New York City.
Cronin and his lawyer left the
courthouse without commenting.
Cop posed as tipster, then busted New Brunswick journalist
By Brian Amaral | NJ.com
NEW BRUNSWICK – Charlie
Kratovil thought he was going to get a scoop about the Police Department.
Instead, the New Brunswick
journalist got arrested.
Kratovil, who is the editor of
New Brunswick Today, released an audio recording of what he says transpired
Tuesday night, after he was accused of violating a temporary restraining order.
Kratovil says he received a
phone call Tuesday night from an anonymous tipster. The man, who didn't give
his name, told Kratovil he could tell him which police officer threw away a
book of traffic tickets, which Kratovil reported on earlier this month. The
city is investigating the claim.
Kratovil and the man agreed to
meet at Starbucks on George Street. When Kratovil showed up, he was arrested.
