Brazen Robbery Highlights NYPD Corruption and Why Police Cannot Ever be Trusted

Leave a fox to guard a hen-house, and this is bound to happen. This is the end result of putting police on a pedestal, granting them special privilege and power over citizens, raising them up to be social demigods. Absolute power, corrupts absolutely. So think about this, the next time the government wants to take away a little bit more of your freedom and hand it over to the police. 

Corruption case shines light on NYPD

NYPD badges out, Kelvin Jones and the other armed men turned up out of nowhere at a New Jersey warehouse and began barking orders.

Jones told startled workers that the New York Police Department had sent the team there to inspect for counterfeit goods — even though the wholesale dealer of Prada, Versace and other fragrances was legitimate.

The men herded about a dozen employees into a tiny back office and tied them up. By then, it was obvious something was amiss.

"We were kind of shocked," one worker recalled. "We were like, why is the NYPD coming in here like this?"
Another blurted: "You're not cops."

But Jones was indeed an NYPD officer. In fact, he had held an elite undercover position.

Two with him were also part of the NYPD. A third was a former officer. But these were hardly "New York's Finest."

What they'd set up to look like a police raid was instead a brazen, $1 million robbery.

Read the full in-depth article at this link:  http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/22/corruption-case-shines-light-on-nypd/

The article concludes with the sentiments of the former deep-cover NYPD operative...

At sentencing, he claimed, "I was framed," but the judge was unmoved.

As much as I like to see a scumbag cop get his just desserts, I can't help but think that maybe he wasn't lying. When the system is so corrupt from the top down, how can we actually pretend that incidents like this are "isolated" sort of "one-time" events? We know for a fact they are not. Every single day police are committing crimes, and more times than not, they are not even questioned about it much less held to account by their department, or in a court room. Anything from falsifying reports (bearing false witness) to murder, are routinely swept under the rug. So when one or two are actually held accountable, I am highly suspicious of the why, when so many others seem to get away with crime after crime through their entire career, and even allowed to retire before being prosecuted so that they can still get their tax-payer subsidized pensions.

There are really only two answers to that. One, that a cop screwed up so bad and so publicly that prosecuting them would actually help the reputation of their department. Or that a cop stepped on the toes of someone more powerful, threatening to upset an even larger criminal conspiracy. Given the nature of this character's secret undercover work and the fact that the NYPD has refused to share any details of what he may have actually been involved in, it is quite plausible that they threw him under the bus when he got too close to the truth about something, or as part of a larger behind-the-scenes chess game. We will never know. How can we know? We are told to "trust" the police and "trust" the government and then lied to at every turn.

   The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be,  secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.   

- Patrick Henry, American colonial revolutionary