Recently, there have been a spate of charges against officers in New York and other cities captured on video cameras in incriminating acts. Philadelphia police appear to have different approach: they first methodically disable cameras before allegedly committing criminal acts. In one video at the heart of the current scandal, Officers Jeffrey Cujdik and Thomas Tolstoy allegedly enter a bodega with other narcotics members and immediately disable the security cameras by cutting wires before removing cash and pigging out on free food. In the September 2007 video, Tolstoy looks at each of the camera and tells the team: “I got like seven or eight eyes. There’s one outside. There is one, two, three, four in the aisles, and there’s one right here somewhere.”Unfortunately for them, there was a back-up system.
The scene is described in the article below:
Then Sgt. Bologna looks up and waves his finger toward the ceiling: “Whaddya got, cameras over there? . . . Where are they hooked up to?”
In fact, every officer seems fixated on the surveillance system.
“Where’s the video cameras? The cassette for it?” Richard Cujdik asks.
“Does it record?” Jeffrey Cujdik quickly adds.
Officer Kuhn then steps up on a milk crate that he had placed underneath a ceiling camera and struggles to reach it. “I need to be f—ing taller,” Kuhn mumbles as another officer laughs.
“You got a ladder in here, Cuz?” Kuhn asks Duran.
“Yo,” Tolstoy calls out from behind the register. “Does this camera go home? Can you view this on your computer, too?”
“I can see [at], yeah, home, yeah,” Duran replies.
“So your wife knows we’re here, then?” Tolstoy asks.
“My wife? No. She not looking the computer right now,” Duran says.
“Hey, Sarge . . . Come ‘ere,” Tolstoy shouts out.
Bologna ambles over to the front counter.
Jeffrey Cujdik leans in and whispers, “There’s one in the back corner right there.”
“It can be viewed at home,” Tolstoy says.
As the others talk, Officer Parrotti reaches up to another camera in front of the register. He pulls the wire down and slices it with a bread knife taken from the store’s deli.
“OK. We’ll disconnect it,” Bologna assures Tolstoy. “That’s cool.”
Meanwhile, Parrotti’s hand covers the camera lens and he appears to yank the camera from the ceiling.
The screen goes black.
“They could watch what’s happening at the store at your house?” Bologna asks.
The audio cuts out.
After locating Tolstoy’s “eyes,” the Nacotics Field Unit Officers cut every wire. They then arrested the owner for misdemeanors and take nearly $10,000 in cash. Also missing are cartons of Marlboros and Newports. the officers also allegedly drank free sodas and wolfed down fresh turkey hoagies, Little Debbie fudge brownies and Cheez-Its.
What is also equally disturbing is the pretext of the raid. In Philadelphia, police may raid businesses that sell small zip lock bags as drug paraphernalia. Under state law, it’s illegal to sell containers if the store owner “knows or should reasonably know” that the buyer intends to use them to package drugs. It strikes me as a facially absurd law that is ripe for abuse.
The video reinforces the accounts of other businesses complaining about some of the same officers coming in to their businesses and cutting the surveillance systems before looting cash, products and food. At least eight other stores reported the same tactics by Cujdik and others.
All of the raids were made under the pretext of this baggie law and the owners complained that thousands of dollars were taken but that only a fraction was recorded at the station.
Cujdik is already under investigation for allegedly lying on search warrants to gain access to suspected drug homes. His brother — Officer Richard Cujdik — is also involved in some of these allegations.
Notably, in the raid, the Cujdik brothers, Tolstoy, Thomas JKuhn, Anthony Parrotti and squad supervisor Sgt. Joseph Bologna entered despite that fact that no ziplock bags were sold during the period of their surveillance. They also search the owners van despite not having a warrant for the van.
During the raid, Jeffrey Cujdik told Duran that he was seizing the cameras and computer monitor “as evidence because you’re selling drug paraphernalia. So we gotta get rid of it. . . . You got yourself on video selling drug paraphernalia.” A ridiculous and transparent suggestion.
Despite this ridiculous law and these equally ridiculous assertions, Municipal Court Judge James M. DeLeon in February 2008 sentenced the owner Jose Duran to nine months’ probation after he pleading “no contest” to the charges. He lost his business.
For the full story, click here.
By the way, the Royals stink! Go Angels!
If I am such a fool, why do you go into such elaborate detail attempting to defend your ego against such a petty slight?
Buddha, you continue to speak as if stupidity were a virtue.
lol
I had forgotten about the replay fiasco. Thanks for the reminder, Bob!
(in media res)
“Anticipating the game, the Royals have been forced to fly to New York on their way to Baltimore for a series with the Orioles. When they arrive, they still are not sure they are going to play because of the court hearings. Finally, word arrives: head over to Yankee Stadium. The game is on.
Brett, however, is not required to go to the stadium because he had been ejected from the game, so he watches on TV with his manager Dick Howser, also ejected. What they — and everyone — see is astonishing: first, Martin tries to make a joke out of the game by putting lefthanded first baseman Mattingly at second base and pitcher Ron Guidry in center field. Then, before a pitch is even thrown before the crowd of 1,245, Martin protests that Brett didn’t touch first base on his homer. He orders his pitcher, George Frazier, to step off the rubber and toss the ball to Ken Griffey at first. Tim Welke, the first-base umpire, signals safe. Then Martin protests that Brett didn’t touch second. So Frazier throws to second base, and Dave Phillips, the umpire there, also signals safe.”
….
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/espn25/story?page=moments/67
Bob,
Because.
Gyges,
When the league ruled that the last inning of that game had to be replayed, who played Center field for the Yankees?
Sorry, hit the send button too soon:
As Bob pointed out, that’s one of the subtler points made in 1984. Most people focus on the Big Brother is Watching theme and tend to miss out on some of the deeper warnings.
You know, historically one of the most common ways to control a populace is to make sure that everyone does something illegal and then selectively prosecute. If I live in constant fear of being arrested, I’m much less likely to protest on behalf of my fellow man.
Is this the best that the governmental official can do with in our system. People who live in houses made of Red Brick, live in Red Houses. People who live in Greenhouses, the question is what color is it?
Some people can’t spell worth a dang, but the communication that they convey is worth reading the misspelled words and all. Per Chance has anyone ever read Steinbeck?
Have you ever heard of you spot it you got it?
No, Bob . . . I said “pine” not “pine tar”. lol
Buddha: “You’d be better served by riding the pine.”
Just ask George Brett.
lol
Oh yeah, I get a free ride here. As if. No one gets a free ride here, sport. That’s not an insult to me, but to all the regulars. Regulars, I might add, who would hand me my head on a plate if I couldn’t run with them. It happens all the time. It just happened to you.
Schil, or more appropriately, Schill, you can attack me personally all you like. I’ve previously demonstrated in several different ways that this tactic not only fails consistently but fails disastrously. It fails because raw insult and ad hominem is the lowest form of attack, whereas what I often practice, satire, is one of the highest forms of attack. Satire, when properly deployed and much like a case, relies upon fact and logic as a base for poking the foibles of others. It is upon this crux of logic paired with humor you trolls often find yourself nailed down – martyrs in your own mind. You think I’m a fool? Then you’ve mistaken yourself as someone who’s opinion matters to me in specific and in general to anyone who reads or posts here regularly, Mr. Drive By. It sound like simple jealousy that none of your troll buddies play as well as I do. People don’t get respect as due here. They have to earn it. If I haven’t been sent to the remedial blogs yet by Coach Appleton, the most fearsome Coaches Bob and mespo or our GM, the right honorable Prof. JT, it’s for a good reason. Part of that reason is I can bring the heat and I wield a mean (yet disturbingly funny) stick. You want to challenge my statements on a factual basis? Knock yourself out. Be ready to rumble. You want to just call names? You’d be better served by riding the pine. You won’t win.
On the other hand, you probably aren’t smart enough to realize the true function of fools. Here’s some assistance on that – read “King Lear” and have someone capable of understanding literature explain the function of the Lear’s Fool to you. This should show you how doomed you are. What you intended as insult can indeed be construed as compliment. Hurt my feelings? Was that your intention? Well, what you’ve provided is a good laugh. At your expense.
I now return you to our regularly scheduled program of promoting justice in general and the Constitution in specific.
Go Royals! (We might actually have a team this year! Woo Hoo!)
Schilderiana, there are several spelling and grammatical errors in your post. Please correct them and repost. Should these errors continue, it will be necessary to send you to one of the remedial blogs.
One thing consistent on these blogs are the asenine statements that buddha provides. This fool speaks as if stupididity were a virtue.
This is a 1983 claim if there ever was one.
One of the auto-generated links above is about police arresting someone for filming them. This story shows why they are so sensitive.
Perhaps police should lobby for a law similar to that introduced in the UK banning photographs of them doing their duty. Then such disabling of cameras would be legal and the police could prosecute Duran for having the illegal backup pictures of them.
Actually this incident shows the drug laws acting as they are supposed to. “Duran” does not sound like a good white American name, does it, he is probably one of those evil immigrants of Spanish descent that are so upsetting to decent Americans at the moment. So the law manages to convict him as the evil purveyor of assistance to drug traffickers that he is and the collateral damage of destroying his business is a bonus. The police rewarding themselves by appropriating some of Duran’s ill gotten gains provides them just compensation for their low pay and unpleasant work conditions. Another benefit, perhaps this will teach Duran that the American dream of upward social mobility by working 18 hours a day is not for the likes of him.
The beauty of the drug laws is that they require snooping and snitching for enforcement and the agents of the law can choose where to snoop and on whom to pressure to snitch. There is no requirement that they give equivalent scrutiny at decent white Anglo operators of small stores that also may have zip lock bags in stock.
The selective enforcement by race or ethnicity of the criminal law provides a legitimate means of discriminating against members of minorities that the mainstream hate. All laws can be enforced in a discriminatory way but the drug laws which outlaw normal human behavior, the consumption of and the trading in mind altering substances, provide more scope to discriminate than do laws against real crimes like theft and murder. The total number of breaches of the drug laws is so huge that an enforcement budget orders of magnitude greater than what is available would still only allow detection and prosecution of a small proportion of them. With limited budgets it is no more than common sense to concentrate on those areas where the ratio of convictions to money spent is highest. Since poor people of color are easier to convict than members of legitimate society because jurors are less likely to believe them and they are less likely to be able to employ competent legal representation concentrating on them makes sense.
Drug prohibition has always been associated with racist malice. Opiates were not a problem in the nineteenth century when respectable medicos and little old ladies were zonking themselves with cough mixture. They only became a problem when the US had more Chinese immigrants than it would tolerate. That the Chinese smoked opium in the same way as Whites used tobacco an alcohol meant that outlawing opiates was a good way of turning them into criminals. The campaign for prohibition was bolstered by scare campaigns about white women being corrupted in opium dens. Likewise marijuana was outlawed in conjunction with a moral panic about crazy Mexicans. I suspect that America’s attachment to drug prohibition today is in part because many good white people see excessive incarceration of Negroes and Hispanics as a good thing.
This is a military and paramilitary police force arrayed against the people. Our on the ground “justice” system is breaking down. We lay off peace officers, keeping in place the military style cops who harm our citizens. In Toledo, we no longer have the money to provide enough prosecutors. Somehow our govt. finds money to needlessly support fusion centers to spy on ever greater numbers of our citizens. They support cops who harrass/maime/kill us. These men should have been investigated at the first complaint and removed from any position of power. A corrupt police and judicial system is a powerful signal that the priorities of a society are completely out of wack.
Selling baggies is drug paraphernalia? Yeah, that makes a lot fo sense. I want to see them try that tactic with a lager opponent. Say one that sells more baggies than just about anyone.
Like Costco.
Better yet, go raid a Glad factory.
Yes those drug laws really are profitable for corrupt cops.