The Twin Cities Carry Journal

The Metro Gang Strike Force scandal is, alas, the gift that keeps on giving.

Commissioner Clousseau explains how squad car cameras stop cops from stealing stuff inside of buildings.

Start here. Okay.  For those of you who came in late, the short form:  after years of Bad Cops Gone Wild among — at the very least — many members of the MGSF, the Department of Public Safety under Inspector Clousseau Commissioner Michael Campion, has been tasked with cleaning up the mess that his department funded, supervised, and so ineptly permitted to continue (and even evaluated with glowing reports) for years.

Campion’s latest solution to widespread badged arrogance and corruption:  squad car video.  I’m not making this up, you know. Now, actually, I’m a big fan of putting video cameras in squad cars, for any number of reasons. Properly used — and we’ll get to that in a moment — it can be a useful tool for several good things:  dispelling certain kinds of false accusations against cops (I’m opposed to false accusations), and — as long as the badged perp in question doesn’t have access to the machine, and can’t turn it off or grab and “lose” the tape — documenting certain kinds of bad behavior, like, say, this: For those who don’t have the time and patience, you’ll see a whole bunch of MPD cops mistaking  a drunk driver for a pinãta.

Here's what the pinãta's face looked like when they were done.

(Just to save some time:  I’m neither going to defend drunk driving nor resisting arrest; both are illegal and foolish.  But when the resisting stops, recreational tuning up is more than merely kinda naughty.  Watch the video; it’s a lot more than merely kinda naughty, and you don’t have to believe the human pinãta when your own eyes will serve just fine.)

Naturally, there are some cops with less than a keen eye for the obvious.  In response to an order from the very top brass in the MPD, Lieutenant Mike “Fountain Of” Sauro sent out an email where he explained to his badged boys and girls that they hadn’t done anything wrong, and implicitly gives new instruction to said boys and girls. No, they don’t kick the shit out of a guy, he helpfully explains.  Instead, they are well-trained, devoted public servants who simply engage in “stunning blows to obtain compliance.”  If the FBI doesn’t understand that, well, that’s just ’cause they’re not the sort of highly-paid professional asskickers that Sauro and his guys are. Well, if I wasn’t familiar with Sauro’s history, I’d be stunned, too, and point out that, yeah, his excuse really blows.  But I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that he won’t “obtain compliance” with his just barely concealed order to keep on kickin’ on, alas. But I digress.  As, appallingly but predictably, does Commissioner Clousseau Campion in his latest attempt to point the legislature at something shiny.   What’s next?

“Look:  the Winged Victory of Samothrace!” Floop, suggested the tarpit. (I’ll be very disappointed if the Popehat guys don’t get the reference.)

Squad videos, while by no means the silver bullet for even bad behavior that happens in front of a squad car — even when the evidence is preserved, and not “lost” — is like putting a bandaid on a heart transplant candidate.

Note the  lack of accountability, cops making up the laws as they go along and putting themselves above the law, and, perhaps most tellingly:  arguably less corrupt cops who, while refusing to go inside various raid locations and join the shopping spree, simply chose to stand outside and play Sergeant Schultz:  they see nozzink, and do nozzink.  Look at the “evidence room” at MGSF HQ being turned into a pirate’s trove of booty to be distributed to various cops and their families; consider the possibility that, just perhaps, the stacks and stacks of undocumented, poorly-secured cash remaining at MGSF HQ might be just a tad smaller than they should be, because — just maybe — the sort of folks who would, in the careful, almost painful circumlocution of the Luger/Eglehoff report, were “routinely taking property for their personal use” might also have fingers that are sticky for other folks’ cash?

And you’re going to touch that by putting cameras in squad cars, Campy? Who do you think you’re fooling? Here’s a thought, Commissioner:  even in the unlikely event that the MGSF thieves were to have driven their squads into the buildings, or into the “property room” at their HQ,  you think, even if those squads had been equipped with cameras, they might have foiled your clever plan to keep them honest by, oh, not turning the cameras on?

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