The Remarkable Hollywood Police DUI Video Case

Oh, you just can't make this stuff up.

A most disgraceful episode for law enforcement in Broward County, orchestrated by cops not paying attention to their oath, forgetting about a dashboard camera, and protecting their own, all things a citizen should fear most. All come in to play in the most egregious act by law enforcement that we have witnessed in years.

Four veteran Hollywood, Fla., police officers falsified a police report to cover up a crash involving a fellow officer.

The crash was caught on the officer's dashboard camera and on the audiotape, Sgt. Dewey Pressley, a 21-year-veteran of the force, is heard allegedly plotting to cover up what happened.

"Well, I don't lie and makes things up ever, because it's wrong," Pressley said. "But if I need to bend it a little to protect a cop, I'm gonna."

On tape, Pressley is also heard directing another officer on how to write the report.

"I will write the narrative out for you. I will tell you exactly how to word it so it can get him off the hook. You see the angle of her car? You see the way it's like this? As far as I'm concerned, I am going to word it she is in the left hand lane. We will do a little Walt Disney to protect the cop, because it wouldn't matter because she was drunk anyway," Pressley said.

Officers Dewey Pressley, Joel Francisco, Andrew Diaz and Community Service Officer Karim Thomas are all being investigated by Internal Affairs.

Meanwhile, the Broward State Attorney's Office has dropped DUI charges against Torrensvilas.

The conduct is disgraceful. Think about it again and again and it is mind boggling. If they would do this here, why not elsewhere? If they have done it now, have they not done it before? Who else are the unknown victims?

A sad day, but is it out of the ordinary or just out and very ordinary?

One wonders in a county that gave us Powertrak. A chief of police came to Hollywood to help clean up the department. I guess now he gets a new chance. Apparently the windows were still very dirty.

FLPD Police Beating Caught on Video

Another camera, another secret video, and another exoneration.

Sadly, yet another incidence of police brutality was exposed today, and it appears to have occurred in an elevator with a bunch of college students and about three or four unidentified Fort Lauderdale cops.

The felony charges against the young man accused of Battery LEO have been dropped by an ASA Supervisor, Lee Cohen, and the Sun Sentinel captures the story in today's online reporting.

Here is the link to the video:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/video/?slug=sfl-0304policeelevator.video

and as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story by Tanya Alanez:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/sfl-bn-0304video,0,1616907.story

Contradicting the police report, elevator surveillance video shows three officers aggressively rushing and beating Joshua Daniel Ortiz, of Sunrise, and taking him to the ground. Ortiz suffered a broken nose and was arrested and charged with felony battery on a law enforcement officer.

The saddest thing about episodes such as these are that young defendants face mandatory adjudications of guilt upon a plea, and prosecutors often ask for jail time.

In your heart, you say to yourself that if everyone so charged ever had a video of the alleged incident at their disposal to display to a jury regarding the arrest, over half would get their cases dismissed.

In your head, though, you say a jury might convict, a judge might put your client away, and prudence rather than your passion requires you to cop to a plea which turns your stomach and you would prefer not to take. Your gut wrenches, but your client is the one who goes away if you lose the case, so against your will and against your better instincts you settle for a compromise you do not want to make. You go home with a bad taste in your mouth and sell out in your brain and you head to a bar, have a crown and coke, and say 'maybe next time.'

Well, today, for this one lawyer, Stephen Melnick, today was next time. Congratulations. Those days do not come about as often as you would like.

Dirty Cops May Deep Six DUI Arrests

Maybe the deputies in Broward were doing steroids, but that is a lot less of a problem then the one blowing in the Windy City. Those problems would be the revelations today that a series of top DUI enforcement cops have fabricated charges against innocent defendants. Holy Lawsuit!

Dozens of DUI arrests may be dismissed in Chicago because the officer, Joe Parker, who made them has come under suspicion of falsifying them and framing drivers. He's the second cop to be accused of such wrongdoing.

Blues Singer Vanessa Davis may be one of Parker's victims, after Parker stopped her in 2005."He said, 'I smell liquor on you' and I said, 'You couldn't possibly, because I haven't been drinking,'" Davis said, recalling the night she was arrested.

A judge later threw out the DUI and the city paid Davis $100,000 to settle a lawsuit against Parker. Davis suffers from multiple sclerosis, and she said her anxiety from the arrest caused severe medical complications.

Parker faces a federal lawsuit by another man, Wayne Jackson, who said he was stopped by Parker while driving home from work on Lake Shore Drive in 2006. Jackson said he was given a field-sobriety test, which he said he passed. Parker's arrest report said Jackson was swaying and that his speech was slurred.Jackson said he passed a Breathalyzer test.

Now the Cook County State's Attorney's office is reviewing dozens of Parker's cases. Last year, prosecutors dropped more than 50 cases after accusing Chicago officer John Haleas of perjury. He had been honored as one of the top DUI enforces in the state. The perjury case against Haleas is still pending.

It is the criminal justice system, and some days it seems far more criminal than it does just. Lenny Bruce once said 'In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.' One month of blogging and criss crossing the Internet for legal articles, and day after day you witness corrupt judges, dirty cops, rotten lawyers, and a system so taxed at every level you wonder how anything ever functions. You wonder how you spent your life in a world so seedy; how soiled you have inevitably become being part of that process. The scales of justice are blind. They should be. Lady Justice would be frightened if she could see.