-Caveat Lector- http://www.herald.com/content/today/docs/069481.htm Published Sunday, January 9, 2000, in the Miami Herald I-95 crash points to unwritten police rule Cases show cops don't ticket cops BY BRAD BENNETT [EMAIL PROTECTED] When the Florida Highway Patrol incorrectly blamed two dead brothers instead of a drunken FBI agent for the wrong-way crash on Interstate 95 six weeks ago, it may have at least partly stemmed from a widespread and largely unspoken creed: Cops don't ticket cops. Law enforcement officers routinely give other officers the benefit of the doubt where traffic laws are concerned. A corollary, borne out by a Herald study three years ago, is that the other driver in a two-car crash involving a law enforcement officer will very often be ticketed. ``Traffic violations are the best example where officers rarely will ticket another police officer who displays a badge or says, `I'm a police officer,' '' said Geoff Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina and formerly at the University of Miami. Alpert has studied police driving, police ethics and police accountability for more than 20 years. ``That's probably the most frequent type of courtesy that the police give each other.'' Alpert pointed out that, in his own home state, a South Carolina highway patrol chief was forced to resign after helping an FBI agent get a drunk driving charge reduced to speeding, and then trying to cover up his own involvement. In Florida, the FHP -- which now admits it botched the investigation into the Nov. 23 crash that killed Lauderhill brothers Maurice Williams, 23, and Craig Chambers, 19 -- has a long-standing policy preventing troopers from ticketing each other, said Maj. Ken Howes, chief spokesman for the FHP. But he insists it's a stretch to suggest that this modest courtesy between cops could have tainted the highway patrol's efforts to determine the true circumstances of the horrific crash between a Kia containing the two brothers and a Honda driven by the FBI agent, David Farrall, 36, of Coconut Creek. Law enforcement officers who are involved in serious violations do not get a free pass, he said. At a news conference Dec. 23, the highway patrol announced it was the FBI agent, not the brothers, who were heading the wrong way on I-95, but attributed the error to an ``honest mistake'' by a 23-year-old rookie trooper. However, that rookie, Rene Guillen, told The Herald last week that he did not actually prepare the inaccurate incident reports that bear his name, but merely signed off on documents dictated by several other, more senior officers. What's more, rather than commit a single ``mistake,'' the troopers who guided Guillen in his paperwork actually made a series of unsupported assumptions, misstatements and glaring omissions, each favoring the FBI agent. How and why this took place is now the subject of an internal FHP inquiry. The unwritten understanding that cops don't ticket cops is not just a Florida phenomenon. Around the country, newspapers have detailed how the professional courtesy comes into play. The Omaha World-Herald reported last March that two police officers took a drunken fellow officer home and put him to bed rather than cite him for drunken driving after he nearly struck a civilian's car. The Washington Post reported two years ago that a police chief in Maryland came under scrutiny for running a red light and hitting another car without getting a ticket. The Denver Rocky Mountain News reported that the average Colorado driver is statistically 22 times more likely to get a traffic ticket than a Denver police officer. In Kansas City, Mo., police are 50 times less likely than ordinary folk to be ticketed, according to The Kansas City Star. Three years ago, The Herald reviewed more than 130,000 Florida crash reports from the two-year period ending in 1995. Among the findings: in 66 accidents involving police cruisers in the city of Hollywood, 43 civilian drivers were ticketed. And not one police officer. In one South Florida episode, a state trooper on patrol in North Miami Beach crashed her FHP Mustang into the rear of a Datsun stopped at a traffic light. The trooper didn't get a ticket, but the Datsun driver did -- for worn tires. A Dade County School Resource Officer was driving his cruiser to work when he pulled out from a stop sign in Homestead and hit the front of a school bus carrying 16 teenagers, injuring one. No ticket. In yet another case a Pembroke Pines man was rear-ended by a Pines officer in 1994. ``The guy takes out my rear end and then tickets me,'' James Norman Sisley of Pembroke Pines told The Herald after the incident. ``It took five cops standing around 20 minutes to find something they could pin on me.'' Howes said FHP troopers make it a practice not to ticket a colleague because troopers who break traffic laws can face administrative sanctions. ``There's a problem with double jeopardy when you do that,'' Howes said. ``If you issue a trooper a traffic citation, then how can you discipline him for the same offense?'' Despite assurance from FHP that a rookie gaffe caused the misreporting of the crash, relatives of the two brothers killed in the wrong-way crash on I-95 north of Atlantic Boulevard in Pompano Beach see a sinister pattern at work. Through their attorneys, the family has suggested the FHP not only made unwarranted judgments on the scene, but deliberately tailored the details in its accident report and news release to support those judgments. That assertion was bolstered somewhat last week when the investigating FHP trooper told The Herald that senior colleagues who assisted in writing the reports simply presumed that because Farrall was an FBI agent, he must have been going in the proper direction. Guillen said he was only following orders from senior officers when he signed off on the police report and news release based on facts he did not know to be true. Although he cautioned it's dangerous to make any judgments from afar, Alpert, the South Carolina expert on police-related traffic accidents, said the circumstances surrounding Broward's wrong-way crash investigation should sound alarm bells. ``Who's going the wrong way on a roadway and who's drunk, those are things that should be pretty easy to determine,'' he said. ``This isn't not giving a guy a ticket for speeding. This is far more serious.'' Although the FHP, whose bread-and-butter is investigating traffic accidents, claims the mishandled investigation was inadvertent, here is how the mistakes and omissions all favored Farrall: The initial news release said he was going the right way on I-95. He wasn't. Or so the FHP now says. The accident report states he was not drunk. A test at the hospital determined he was -- that, in fact, his blood alcohol level was more than twice the .08 limit. The news release issued by FHP says the federal agent ``observed'' a vehicle hurtling right at him on northbound I-95. In fact, investigators do not know what Farrall ``observed'' -- and never did. After identifying himself as a law officer, Farrall asked troopers to phone his supervisor and then was whisked away to the hospital, where FBI colleagues checked him in under an assumed name and guarded the door to keep investigators away. In a yet-unexplained violation of standard operating procedures, the sketch of the accident shows where the two cars came to a rest after the crash, but doesn't label which is which. Once those labels are affixed it is clear from the drawing that the car that came to a halt on its side on the inside shoulder -- that is, the brothers' car -- was the one going in the proper direction. When a tape containing copies of 911 calls made in the moments before the accident was released to reporters, a phone call was edited out. That call, from a driver with a cell phone, reported that a ``dark'' car was speeding the wrong way on northbound I-95. The agent's Honda was green; the brothers' Kia, beige. The call, which is known to have taken place, is not on the tape and is not referred to in the accident report or news release. Questioned on the omission, FHP said it was removed because it is germane to the investigation. ``There seems to be no question that the FBI agent is getting the benefit of the doubt,'' said Donald Bowen, president of the Urban League of Broward County, who also suspects that race -- the brothers were black; the FBI agent is white -- was a factor. ``It seems to me they're treating him in a manner that might be more accommodating than someone that's not in law enforcement.'' Copyright 2000 Miami Herald -- ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ----------------------- DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
