Once upon a time, when I was still an active lawman, I spent an about 18 months period assigned to the Internal Affairs Office for our agency.
It was found by our investigators that, of all complaints of police corruption & brutality that were lodged against our staff, over the preceding decade, that over 92% of those claims were not only FALSE but KNOWINGLY DISHONEST.
I remember specifically one case where a woman from Baltimore stated under oath that she had witnessed one of our uniformed officers beating a civilian with what she said “that looked like a piece of pipe, until he fell unmoving onto the sidewalk”.
Mrs. D_______________ further stated that at that time that she was standing on her terrace & directly across the street & 3 floors above where the beating occurred”.
The witness also stated that she could see the face of our officer clearly & picked his face from a “photo spread”.
Investigation later determined that the witness could NOT have witnessed what she claimed that she had seen as there was a 8-story apartment house between the place where the incident happened & her balcony.
(Under questioning, she finally admitted that the “victim” was a friend of her stepsister’s & that if she claimed to have seen the incident that “I just know that I’ll be on television. & I might even get some money later when Paul wins his suit against th epolice.” - The witness was indicted, tried, convicted & sentenced to 46 months confinement in a federal correctional facility for Criminal Perjury.)
Ever since that time, I’ve taken all such claims with a POUND of salt.
Yours, TMN78247
Prior to retiring, I conducted preliminary inquiries into allegations made by inmates against detention officers. I spent hours doing the investigations.Once, I watched over twelve hours of video for one allegation. In each case, I was able to prove a negative, my officers were innocent of the charges lodged by the inmate.
I wanted to charge the inmates for lying and filing false police reports. I was told there was a court case some time back where a judge ruled that the inmates could not be charged because it could deter a legitimate complaint from being filed.