Bizarre, Criminal law

Dallas Officer Suspended Over Facebook Postings

Dallas Police Sr. Cpl. Cat Lafitte has become the latest victim of the enticement of Facebook. Lafitte reportedly posted an assortment of shocking comments on her accounts, including bragging about cutting a hospital worker’s face when he tried to get her to stop screaming profanities into her cellphone.

The six-year veteran is now on administrative leave while being investigated. She is also accused of posting the picture of a small black boy surrounded by officers with the comment, “Quick . . . sprinkle some crack on him!”

Lafitte, 32, also described herself as an “Official Bum Roller,” part of attacks on homeless people. In the case of the hospital worker, she reportedly stated that she “threw my boot at him, Jerry Springer style, and nailed him in the face . . . It broke his glasses and cut his face and bruised it up real good.” His offense? He wanted to stop her from “cussin out my Lieutenant on the phone.”

This raises a novel variation of our prior discussion (here) of the increasing punishment meted out to public employees over writings and conduct in their private lives. Lafiite is a bit different, however. The alleged posting could be used as evidence of a crime of assault. As for the homeless people, the commentary would also be incriminating evidence as to abuse of official power.

Source: Chronicle found on Reddit

Jonathan Turley

25 thoughts on “Dallas Officer Suspended Over Facebook Postings”

  1. Cat Lafitte is not my DPD. she does not represent dallas pd.
    This kind of reminds me when michael davison posted all that stupid stuff on his myspace when we were at the academy.
    The dumb tub of lard got us all in big trouble, but the consequences weren’t bad because thankfully he was best friends with cpl richeson. lol.
    nobody i know trusts him (or the other fat kid ) to this day because of all that stuff he did at the academy, but it’s still hard to believe he hasn’t been fired for the lies and other bad crap he’s done.
    sorry guys; it happens.
    But davison and cat lafitte represent the worst of dallas, and I don’t want people to get the department confused with these scum.
    Yeah dallas fires cops all the time, but at least they are trying to clean house.
    And the training/hiring program is under review so hopefully, we won’t have any more human-garbage that join this good department only for the pension.
    Southwest all the way baby!

  2. The only person who is bigger scum is Sgt Paul Hinton for making racial jokes (especially his imitation of black/hispanic people) and corporal manuel sanchez using vuglar slang.

    way to go, “trainers”

  3. An update to the Maryland story I linked to earlier.

    “Maryland’s Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services has suspended a roughly year-old practice of asking prospective employees to voluntarily divulge their user names and passwords to social media Web sites such as Facebook to check for gang affiliations, the department said Tuesday.”

  6. Dear internet,

    Whatever you put up, even on sites you think are private, isn’t private.

    Dear employers,

    Your employees have a life outside of work.

    That said, I’m with James on this one.

  8. I originally posted this to the Corrections thread as a story suggestion: Should Employers Be Allowed to Ask for Your Facebook Login?

    The story involves a case the ACLU has taken on behalf of a man required to disclose his FB password and account information as part of the hiring process to work in the Maryland Department of Corrections. Both sides of the argument can be made: 1) that it is an impermissible chill on the 1st Amendment and 2) that is is a critical tool that can be used to expose professional negligence, malfeasance and/or criminal activity by public employees holding very critical social trusts by the very nature of their jobs. This Dallas story, of course, plays to the second argument.

  11. rafflaw,

    Peter Frampton’s original gig……

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdXjm8pZMws&w=480&h=390]

    But then again… maybe she’s looking for the Pie, will be humbled …. and I could go on….

  12. This officer makes some of the felons she has worked with. She obvioiusly has an intelligence problem if she is posting alleged crimes on Facebook! If they are true, she should be in jail looking out!

  13. Steroids and/or mean/stupid. If you brag about doing crime on Facebook you need to be more worried about the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments (or your presumption of waiver regarding the Fifth and helping the state meet its burden under the Fourth and Sixth) than about the First. Silly policeman, no doughnut for you.

    http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.6bafe0da3b2e30eb6e9291a9552181c1.a91&show_article=1

    http://prof77.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/police-steroid-drug-abuse/

  14. patricparamedic
    1, February 21, 2011 at 1:12 pm
    And stupidity continues its rise to the top, for all to see.

    So was she always an emotional mess, or did the job cause the deterioration?

    One huge problem with law enforcement is that cops are far too much like physicians for societal good in at least two regards:

    1. They do enormous damage under the guise of authority

    2. They are among the poorest of professions at weeding out the misfits among them.

    ==============================================

    I really have to agree with point #2

  16. Quite interesting running commentary at the Dallas Morning News web site. Consensus seems to be the cop has a screw loose:

    http://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/headlines/20110217-dallas-officer-under-investigation-over-physical-confrontation-with-hospital-employee-and-facebook-postings.ece

    But where do cops get the idea they can behave like thugs and get away with it? To the extent of boasting on Facebook? It has to be in the police department culture. The corrective? Legislation that makes it legal to record video of any police activity that takes place in public. Ubiquitous camera phones make it possible at last to answer the old Roman question of who will watch the guardians; the public collectively will do it.

  17. And stupidity continues its rise to the top, for all to see.

    So was she always an emotional mess, or did the job cause the deterioration?

    One huge problem with law enforcement is that cops are far too much like physicians for societal good in at least two regards:

    1. They do enormous damage under the guise of authority

    2. They are among the poorest of professions at weeding out the misfits among them.

  18. Ah the ever helpful modern (alleged) criminal posting his deeds on facebook, Where’s the video?

  20. This falls into a different category than criticism of a superior or teacher. The officer is being investigated for the underlying conduct she confessed to, not for the postings per se.

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