Cop Costs Taxpayers $60,000 And One (1) Drug Bust After Lying About Almost Everything Related To The Traffic Stop
from the blowing-it-like-pro dept
Oh my. What fun it must have been for this officer to find out his lies were contradicted by his partner's body camera footage. Thanks to these lies, Officer Joshua Bates of the San Jose Police Department is now former officer Josh Bates, target of a federal civil rights lawsuit. But his troubles began during the traffic stop, culminating in this (first) judicial vindication of Cosme Grijalva.
Saying he was “troubled” by the testimony, Superior Court Judge Eric Geffon threw out the drug case in October against former suspect Cosme Grijalva, after the prosecution dismissed the charges. The City Council on Tuesday agreed to settle a civil-rights lawsuit filed by attorney Jaime Leaños on Gijalva’s behalf for $59,900.
No charges and a cash settlement. That's the way things break when officers lie. And lie Bates did. Several times
First, he trapped himself in a lie during cross examination. While seeking to obtain consent to search Grijalva's car, Bates used his phone to contact a translator to help bridge the language gap. Pushed for details on this mysterious translator -- one that had changed sexes during the course of his testimony -- Bates finally settled on calling the translator "she." Then he admitted it wasn't a department translator, but rather someone named Lilia... who just happened to be Bates' wife.
Body-camera video recorded by Bates’ partner, Ian Hawkley, who is also named in the suit, shows Bates telling his wife over the phone: “So what you’re going to do is you’re going to tell this person that I know there is methamphetamine in the car — crystal, and you are going to tell him that I’m going to get a dog who’s going to come over and is going to sniff and tear their car apart.”
Hawkley's video came as a surprise to Bates. Not a complete surprise, though. At one point in the recording, Hawkley let Bates know he was "in the red" (recording) and had been "for awhile." By that point, too much damage had been done. Bates had already called his wife to translate his threat for Grijalva and was engaged in a warrantless search of Grijalva's van without his consent. Bates did not activate his camera, violating PD policy. He also admitted to trying to get Hawkley to deactivate his body cam.
Bates apparently had an ongoing aversion to complying with the Constitution and PD policies.
There is evidence suggesting this might not have been a one-time instance for Bates. According to court documents filed by Singh, the week before Bates’ encounter with Grijalva, he and another officer stopped and arrested a bicyclist on suspicion of alleged marijuana possession. Body-worn camera footage reportedly showed that Bates omitted mentioning a pat-down search in his police report on the incident.
Other video from that case also shows Bates having a conversation with another officer about how to come up with probable cause to make an enforcement stop when there is nothing readily apparent.
Bates also fudged the paperwork in this case. He tried to align his testimony with his bogus police reports but got tripped up by his own faulty memory and his partner's recording of the incident. And that has netted him two lawsuits and an early exit from his law enforcement career. Bates resigned shortly after this disastrous courtroom performance. With any luck, he'll be employed by another law enforcement agency before too long. You know how it is with bad hombres like this. They get sprung on technicalities and are back on the streets (in uniform) within days or weeks of an unceremonious sacking/resignation-tendering.
The only thing in this story that makes it an anomaly is the resignation. Other than that, it's par for the course. Cops lie. And the reason they do it so frequently is that they almost always get away with it. Cameras are changing that… slowly. But they're only slightly better than nothing at all at this point. The sad thing is, we'll just have to take what we can get because law enforcement agencies clearly aren't interested in upsetting the apple cart and letting all these "bad apples" roll into the nearest gutter. Change comes from within and law enforcement has proven itself highly resistant to change.
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Filed Under: 4th amendment, body cameras, civil rights, cosme grijalva, ian hawkley, josh bates, san jose, traffic stop
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Every case this officer touched is now suspect
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Re: Every case this officer touched is now suspect
Aught to, but, unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. That would be too much like justice.
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Re: Every case this officer touched is now suspect
A plea deal means that you accept a punishment instead of justice. It doesn't matter whether you are proven innocent beyond a trace of doubt afterwards.
You can try suing for compensation if the whole plea deal can be shown to have been based on fraud and lies, but the party to sue then are the individual perpetrators rather than the court who was not involved.
And you can probably be thankful if you don't get charged for food and accommodation due to wittingly having accepted a plea deal for a deed you did not commit.
We'll probably see that further perversion of justice in time to come.
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Re: Re: Every case this officer touched is now suspect
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What to do, what to do...
Scott Greenfield has a related post up over at Simple Justice called The Problem With “Make The Cop Pay” Solution He, nor the comments so far, mention any sensible solutions to this particular problem, though they don't mention the ever-greening of the 'cop license' by other agencies who hire cops with bad behavior who have left other jobs.
I think there is something to refusing resignations and firing for cause instead that speaks, though this does not help the victims who have been financially and socially and possibly physically or permanently burdened by the bad behavior. This should be extended to removing any law enforcement license or certification so they might not revise and extend their ways.
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Re: What to do, what to do...
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Re: What to do, what to do...
He really buries the lead. "The problem is that the cop may be judgment proof. If the cop has no wealth or assets, there is no fund from which to collect a judgment."
Okay, that's a problem, but you'd have the same problem if a broke private citizen decided to frame you and assault you. Scott doesn't mention anything about police pensions, which are often generous (unlike "average" workers who don't usually get pensions nowadays) and can be garnished... and have often resulted in outrage when paid to disgraced cops.
It's fairly straightforward that people should be liable for their own illegal behavior, and go to prison for criminal behavior like assault.* That covering for the crimes of others is itself illegal. That employers can face responsibility when failure to properly manage their employees causes injury.
* (Your proposal is all good, but the behavior in Scott's example would result in jail time for any assailant that's not a cop.)
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Re: What to do, what to do...
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Letting a 'bad apple' go... eventually
Then he admitted it wasn't a department translator, but rather someone named Lilia... who just happened to be Bates' wife.
Bates did not activate his camera, violating PD policy. He also admitted to trying to get Hawkley to deactivate his body cam.
Body-worn camera footage reportedly showed that Bates omitted mentioning a pat-down search in his police report on the incident.
Other video from that case also shows Bates having a conversation with another officer about how to come up with probable cause to make an enforcement stop when there is nothing readily apparent.
That sort of behavior does not magically spring into existence. A good cop does not just wake up one day and decide, 'you know, those 'rules' and 'laws' are too much of a pain, thing I'll ignore them from now on'.
While it's nice that they let him resign and therefore he's no longer working for them from the sounds of it he should have been given the boot long before this point, such that the appearance isn't that what he did was a problem, simply that this latest act was too public for them to continue putting up with him.
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This is a clear case of a bad apple - Bates - spoiling the rest of the barrel.
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I will note, however, that him just doing his job properly is warmingly good news, and that's worrisome.
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The other 1%'ers
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But bad cops don't make drugs good -- as Techdirt wishes.
You're now intentionally searching out those so low there's no dispute. But the cost is you've no nuance left, no middle ground where cops are ordinary people trying to prevent harm and preserve some decency: you've demonized them. Techdirt is now blatantly anti-cop, anti-law, and anti-American.
And you're going to run out of such stories, just as have run out of pirate victories and copyright anomalies. Techdirt can now run only about one in eight pieces off Torrent Freak, because those of pirates going to jail just don't fit your template.
Once you were merely trying to come up the "new business models", but that became trying to justify piracy, and out of that tangle began taking up for underdogs, leading eventually to sticking up for criminals, Kim Dotcom, "Dread Pirate" Roberts, Google and its invasive total spying, more recently hoping that downloading child pornography could be thrown out on technicality.
You're pretty much like the cops in the story: have an agenda to push, and cut corners to do it.
Now you're down to just hating cops and trying to gin up the few fanboys.
It's where I KNEW you'd end up by allowing egregious vulgarity and ad hom. Yes, that IS a linear process, kids: you can't let the forms of civil discourse slip and retain the good parts. You've slowly immersed into the cesspit and see nothing but your own filth.
Anyhoo, though stories of late aren't worth commenting on, partly because no dispute, know that I'm HOOTING as you go completely under!
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How's that Paul Hansmeier defense fund coming along, bro?
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Re: But bad cops don't make drugs good -- as Techdirt wishes.
One being bad doesn't suddenly make the other good.
Pretty sure the saying goes "the end doesn't justify the means". Ergo, a cop using illegal means to accomplish an otherwise good goal is still a bad cop.
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So what was the name of your failed band?
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Re: But bad cops don't make Trolls good
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Re: But bad cops don't make drugs good -- as Techdirt wishes.
Cops need to be held to a higher standard than ordinary citizens, because of the special powers they're granted.
I agree that Tim's whole "cops lie" thing overdoes it sometimes - some cops lie, I have no reason to thing *most* cops lie.
But bad cops and bad policing NEED to be exposed and punished. And good cops need to be praised.
(And, BTW, drugs are neither good nor bad - they're just chemicals and have no moral qualities. Only people and their actions can be good or bad.)
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Saying he was “troubled” ...
Missing hyperlink?
“Man gets $60K for wrongful arrest after cop’s testimony thrown out”, by Tracey Kaplan and Robert Salonga, Mercury News, June 26, 2018
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While I applaud his partner refusing to break policy & turn off the camera, how in the actual fuck did he allow this case to get all the way to court before letting the powers that be discover his video proves this bad apple was way worse than anyone expected?
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Perhaps because he wanted to be sure that video would not be accidentally erased while in evidence storage.
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Is a "troubling" testimony recorded on their Brady list?
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Cool Stuff
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The evidence is the behaviour itself, I'd suggest. There's too many obviously bad moves for this to be the first time.
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Did the guy have meth in his car? Was he a drug dealer? The article doesn't say.
The shame in this is also that a criminal is going free.
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It doesn't matter. The fact that he could have been guilty of what he was accused of doing does not excuse law enforcement for trampling all over his rights and lying to the court. If you dislike this, I would suggest that those who are charged with enforcing the law should also follow it while doing so.
"The shame in this is also that a criminal is going free."
He is not a criminal until he is found guilty by a court of law with his rights as a citizen, including due process, intact. Until that point, he is deemed innocent.
It's interesting that you appear to be taking the claim of a cop found to be openly lying to the court at face value. Especially since there's no other reason to suspect meth was present anywhere at the scene from what I can see, let alone the victim being a career drug dealer, as you seem to be suggesting.
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See what I mean, though?
You are still convinced that the man was possibly a drug dealer, possibly had drugs in his car. Yet, the only evidence of that are the works of a corrupt cop who has been demonstrated to have repeatedly lied during and after that traffic stop, as well as numerous other occasions with similar lies. There is no other reason to believe that man had done anything wrong at all from the details in the story, yet here you are still believing he may be guilty of a felony.
Of course, he could be guilty as hell, but whatever happened it's 100% on the cop. Either he let a criminal go, or he came close to locking up an innocent man. Given that the court has now thrown out the case due to the officer's actions, he is an innocent man until proven otherwise.
Again, if this angers you, demand that the police follow the law, not that anyone they baselessly accuse remain under suspicion.
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Secondly, there's been plenty of cases - especially where incompetent or corrupt cops were involved - where field kits have tested positively for illicit substances where the suspect was later found to have no drugs. Some of these have gone to trial, or even later had the victim proven innocent after imprisonment because someone was tampering in the lab.
There is, again, the possibility that this was an otherwise legitimate bust that the cop screwed up by being such an idiot. But, until that's proven, stop assuming that the victim was the guilty party here. He is innocent, until such time as he is later found guilty.
This is why due process exists, because otherwise you wouldn't have a chance against pieces of shit like this.
"why would they go to trial?"
Presumably because the poor guy had "evidence" supplied by the cop weighed against him. But, since the case got thrown out because a large part of it was not true, I see no reason to presume that any of it was true.
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