From FOX News:
Two former Orange County sheriff’s deputies told a California grand jury they did not know it was against the law to falsify police documents, an offense that led to their firing and conviction amid a widespread department “evidence scandal” that came to light last year, according to a local report.
Bryce Richmond Simpson, 31, and Joseph Anthony Atkinson Jr., 39, testified to a grand jury on Sept. 21 that they were never told it was illegal to write in police reports that they had submitted evidence when they actually had not, the Orange County Register recently reported, citing transcripts of their testimony. Deputies were typically expected to submit evidence by the end of their workdays.
They were allegedly two of at least 17 deputies investigated for potential charges for allegedly claiming in reports that they had booked evidence, as required, but failing to do so sometimes until months later, if at all, according to multiple reports.
Think about what happened next and all the potential convictions that will be challenged because people were convinced based on fabricated evidence.
I guess this was inevitable given that that cops are allowed to lie to you so why not be allowed to lie about you to the courts?
The LASD really covering themselves in integrity. An integrity bukkake.
We need cops, we’ve seen what happens in American cities that don’t have enough police.
But this shit is absolutely unacceptable and it needs to be punished hard all the way to the top.
I’m sorry deputy, I didn’t see the sign. I didn’t know the speed limit was only 25 mph on this deserted road. Yeah that’ll work in court, sauce for the goose and all that.
Well, there is a certain amount of fibbing that is allowed during an interrogation. So…
No, seriously, a cop should know the difference between making a false claim during an interrogation, and submitting a false claim to an official record. A big difference between “We got your accomplice in the next room, and I am sure he’s gonna turn on you,” and making up the accomplice’s statement for the record
Here in Maine cops “testimony” is gospel. its up to YOU to prove them wrong. Went thru it on a CCW hearing 7 years ago. Needless to say was a big eye opener for me. 5 years no CCW(but we passed constitutional carry) and 7 years later to paraphrase Mr Willis- now I have a machine gun ho ho ho. Be careful kids very careful
Actually, police reports are NOT official documents to be used in court, and lying on one is not perjury (excepting an affidavit, of course). Police reports are not admissible in court (in 20+ years of trying cases, I’ve never seen a police report admitted into evidence – it doesn’t happen). By themselves, they are hearsay, and the officer who wrote the report must himself testify. He may refresh his recollections with his report, of course; that is in large part what it is for.
Reports also generally contains within them double hearsay – any statement reported within the report by another is usually hearsay, unless that person is present in court to testify regarding that statement (again, excepting a defendant’s statements, which are generally admissible as statements of a party or statements against interest). The rules differ some from state to state, but that’s the general rule.
And yes, as a matter of fact, I am a lawyer.
All that said, the idea that deputies “didn’t know” that they could not lie on reports is laughably ridiculous – either they are too stupid to live, they are lying through their teeth, or a supervisor at the department actually told them that, which is an even bigger problem.
Fire the whole lot – a fish rots from the head, you know.
A police report is hearsay but other official reports are not.
I.e. the officer writes down “witness said Suspect tried to sell him drugs” is hearsay because the officer didn’t wittness it.
Exemptions exist for things like forensic reports and autopsy reports, as out of court business documents. So wouldn’t an evidence log be exempted as well, as in an official documents saying they found 10 lbs of cocaine on your car?
That’s what the police were doing. Creating evidence reports for evidence that didn’t actually exist.
Hearsay, at least in my jurisdiction, is defined as an “out of court statement offered for the truth of the matter asserted.” Sounds simple, often isn’t, and there are many exceptions, most of which are rarely if ever used. There are a number of exceptions that may apply, but a police report, or here, an evidence log, is not one of them – they are still “out of court statements” which are introduced “for the truth of the matter asserted.”
Some reports – typically forensic reports – may be exceptions to hearsay by statute, at least at some hearings (in my jurisdiction, at preliminary hearing), but that does not mean they are automatically admissible at trial. And even if a hearsay exception allowed it (and there are many) there would, in the case of an evidence log or a lab report, for example, be a constitutional confrontation problem. You have the right to confront your accusers, including the lab technician which did the lab work on the case, or the officer who made the evidence log.
More important, none of this excuses these weasels one bit.
And now we’re getting into the procedural weeds. Isn’t law fun?
Not that I’m keeping track, and not that there’s anything wrong with it, but I beleive this is the first time the word “bukkake” has been used on this blog… 🙂
By the “standards” applied to qualified immunity, they will be able to claim that privilege. The courts have held, somehow, some way, that unless the precise act was explicitly prohibited you can’t be held to account for it. It seems to go as far as saying that choking someone with your knee is ok if the department policy only speaks of choking with your hands. At least that’s the impression I get from reporting on the subject.
“An integrity bukkake.”
Sterling Archer: Um… phrasing?!
Since this happened in Orange County, why would you want to defund the LASD?
I don’t know, sounds more like people squabbling over a technicality to me. It doesn’t say that they made up evidence to screw over innocent people or anything, it sounds more like they were being lazy, failed to go in and do the correct paperwork to “submit” the evidence they had, but filed in the report that they HAD done it, when in actuality they didn’t get around to doing it until a significant time later. It doesn’t mean they were claiming evidence that didn’t exist, they were just filling out a form saying “yeah, we checked that box, all finished and correct, boss”. It’s like falsifying a job report form saying “yeah, we cleaned the toilets” when in reality the guys are saying “we’ll just say we did it, and we can do it first thing tomorrow; we’ll miss sports hour at the bar if we do it tonight, but the boss will have a hissy fit if we don’t check off that it’s completed”.
Unethical and problematical, but not exactly “let’s get this innocent guy convicted by making up evidence” either.
You treat the two (check the box so we can get to the bar on time vs. actually making stuff up) as if they are different. That “technicality” is what I call “reasonable doubt.
The two situations aren’t different. They’re lies. Period. In court, if it’s not properly documented, it didn’t happen. An officer taking shortcuts is impeachment material.
Remember: courts are not there to determine actual truth. Actual absolute truth is only known by God, and I can[‘t subpoena God. Truth in a courtroom is whatever the judge or jury, depending on the case, says it is. And if the documents aren’t correct, that is the “truth” that plays out there. Moreover, once an officer is caught taking shortcuts and having to explain why his report was not entirely true, his credibility is shot – and credibility is all he has in a courtroom. An officer is supposed to be on the up and up – unchallengeable. Once you find a hole in his story, a good attorney can take him apart.
I know. I’m a good attorney. I make my living finding that little hole in the state’s case, sticking my finger it, and reaming it out until it leaks reasonable doubt.
These officers should all be fired. And their supervisors fired. And THEIR supervisors, depending on the outcome of the investigation, fired.
In any business in the real world, just “checking the box” so that you can get around to it later will get you fired. And rightfully so.
If the people living in those dem run cities weren’t more afraid of what the remaining cops would do to them if they were caught with (or even worse, having used in self defense) a gun than they were of what might happen if they didn’t have one, I suspect the results of the wide spread police drawdown in those ares would have been quite different from what we’ve seen.