‘Public needs protecting from you’

Steve Mandell was convicted in February for his role in the torture and murder plot. He and his accomplice, Gary Engel — who committed suicide in prison in 2012 — planned to abduct a wealthy businessman, Steve Campbell, and take him to a torture chamber they had built.

There, they would torture Campbell — a real estate magnate — until he signed over land deeds to them, and then they would kill him.

On video secretly taken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Engel and Mandell can be heard discussing how they will torture Campbell before killing him.

“You going to put a little blade there?” Mandell asked, to which Engel replied that he would flay open Campbell’s penis. It would be just like “slicing a banana split. You know what a banana split looks like?”

At sentencing, U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve referenced that part of the video, saying that “the thrill you showed in putting another person in pain and in torturing was chilling. The glee on your face was very apparent.”

“The public needs protecting from you,” she continued. “Your actions in this case, Mr. Mandell, were evil, and showed a complete disregard for human life.”

I’m nauseous just reading the part about the razor blade.  I’m with the judge. This guy is vile. Do police departments run psychological tests on potential new employees? Is a disregard for human life something that would show up on any potential psychological tests?

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 Off-duty police officer racially profiled, assaulted by group of cops

A decorated officer who had worked for the New York City Police Department for nearly three decades, Harold Thomas became a victim of racial profiling and police brutality.

Thomas and his friend had been celebrating a friend’s birthday at La Marina, a night club located in the city’s Washington Heights District. As he exited the club, making his way to his parked Cadillac Escalade, the off-duty police officer was approached by another NYPD cop, Andrew Ali.

Ali told Thomas that his SUV matched the description one reported at a ‘shots fired’ call earlier in the day. Thomas informed Ali that he was a police officer. He presented his badge and his police ID. An official police plaque was displayed prominently in the window of the SUV.

Two more officers approached the scene, James McKenna and Paul Montali. Again, Thomas identified himself as an off duty police officer and presented his ID.

Instead of apologizing and going on the way, the third officer became physically violent.

“[The third cop] spins me around, slams my head on the roof of my car, made a dent in the car, grabbed me by the seat of my pants, throws me head first,”

[…]

Following the assault, Thomas was arrested on trumped up charges, which were soon dismissed by the court. Fortunately for him, his years of service with the NYPD meant that he had established a good relationship with Chief of the Department, Phillip Banks. According to NotJustUs, Banks is the second highest ranking officer in the NYPD.

As Thomas said, however, if they did this to him, ‘the average Joe doesn’t stand a chance.’ Someone with a less than spotless record, few resources and not a single friend in high places would serve years in prison under the same circumstances. That’s if he wasn’t gunned down in the street first.

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‘Goddamned Nazi Stormtrooper’: TX cop tasers 76-year-old man with expired inspection

The Victoria Advocate reported that 76-year-old Pete Vasquez was driving a work-owned vehicle back to his place of business on Thursday when 23-year-old Officer Nathanial Robinson pulled him over for an expired inspection.

Vasquez said that he explained that the car belonged to a car lot, and that the dealer tags made it exempt from having an inspection.

But dashcam video obtained by the paper shows Robinson using force to arrest Vasquez for what should have been a Class C misdemeanor. In the video, Vasquez pulls his arm away from Robinson, and the officer slams him into the hood of the patrol car. The two men disappear from camera range as Robinson places Vasquez in a hold, and then forces him to the ground.

According to police, Robinson shocked Vasquez with a Taser twice while he was on the ground.

“He just acted like a pit bull, and that was it,” Vasquez recalled. “For a while, I thought he was going to pull his gun and shoot me.”

Vasquez was placed in the patrol car, and then transported to Citizens Medical Center for treatment, where he spent the next two hours in police custody. He was eventually released with out being charged or cited.

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Florida cop forgets First Amendment, pulls over car playing ‘Fuck the police’

This perfectly encapsulates the authoritarian attitude of so many law enforcement officials.  We’re expected to defer to them. To give them unearned respect. To listen to their every word. And above all else, to never talk badly about them. We’re socialized to treat police officers this way and it’s gotten so bad that many of them think they can do no wrong.

A Florida police officer seems to have forgotten that his job is to uphold the law, not to hassle people who listen to music that hurts his feelings.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, Hialeah PD’s officer Harold Garzon pulled over a man listening to NWA’s “F*ck Tha Police.” Unfortunately, after approaching the car the officer was hard-pressed to find a legal justification for the stop. Making matters worse, the man he pulled over was a Florida International University law student who was on break over the holidays.

As the Miami New Times reports, the victim, Cesar Baldelomar, was stopped at a red light with his windows down. Harzon was standing nearby filling out some paperwork when suddenly NWA’s anti-police anthem came on the radio. Harzon didn’t take it well.

“Really?” he shouted to the idling car. “You’re really playing that song? Pull over.”

After Baldelomar pulled over, the officer escalated the situation by calling in two more officers and started hurling charges at him. First, Garzon accused Baldelomar of illegally playing loud music within 25 feet of another person. Baldelomar said that was nonsense, and even cited the Supreme Court case that found that a person can’t be arrested for playing loud music in public.

“I knew that because it was a case I had actually studied in law school,” Baldelomar told the paper.

After that, the cops just settled for throwing any violation they could at the student. They wrote out three tickets: one for not having his insurance information (Baldelomar had insurance, but the officer said he needed to have a slip of paper stating that fact), one for an “out-of-state license plate” (like many students, Baldelomar technically still lived in his home state and was only attending school in Florida), and a final one for not wearing a seat belt (a fact Baldelomar disputes).

Garzon never ended up giving Baldelomar a ticket for the “noise,” perhaps knowing that it may be hard to argue with the Supreme Court. Baldelomar plans to fight the charges in court.

The officer responsible has a long and troubling record of being an incompetent cop. He’s had a stunning 16 internal affairs cases brought against him, and seems to be working on his 17th. For comparison, imagine an employee in any other profession receiving 16 write-ups and still be allowed to keep his or her job.

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Sex worker raped by on-duty cop helps investigators catch her assailant

On Friday, a former Nashville police officer was arrested after being indicted by a grand jury for raping a prostitute – while he was on duty, no less.

Jonathan Mays, 44, had been working the Central Precinct’s overnight shift when he raped the 32-year-old sex worker. The victim had gone to police in June, claiming that an on-duty cop had requested that she perform oral sex on him in January. If she refused, the officer threatened to arrest her on the spot.

The police and the victim constructed a plan to catch Mays in the act, and the victim was placed under surveillance. The victim offered to perform oral sex on Mays in exchange for his protection, and the pair agreed to meet at another location. When Mays showed up at the scene, investigators were waiting for him.

Once confronted, Mays tried to deny having any previous involvement with the woman, but later confessed to the January incident. He put in his resignation in July, after having worked in the police department since February 2002.