As I’ve documented in past posts, MADD’s "War on Drunk Driving" has been instrumental in the gradual erosion of our Constitution. See The DUI Exception to the Constitution. But the hysteria has created other problems as well. One of these is the advent of the "Super Cop" — officers who receive MADD awards and promotions as a result of high numbers of drunk driving arrests. See SuperCops…and SuperCons, Another DUI SuperCop and The Latest DUI SuperCop. And as I’ve mentioned in the past, the results have been predictable…
2nd Top DUI Cop Accused of False Arrests
Chicago, IL. Feb. 23 – Another Chicago cop is suspected of framing drivers with false arrests for drunken driving, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
Joe D. Parker, 59, an officer in the Chicago Police Department’s Traffic Enforcement Unit, has been placed on desk duty pending an internal police investigation.
The Cook County state’s attorney’s office, which is also investigating Parker, has moved to dismiss dozens of DUI arrests he made, according to sources who said investigators began scrutinizing the 23-year police veteran’s DUI arrests after video from his squad car did not appear to match an account he gave in an arrest report.
The scrutiny over Parker’s DUI arrests comes almost a year after another Chicago cop, Officer John Haleas, was charged by Cook County prosecutors with perjury, official misconduct and obstructing justice, accused of failing to take important steps in making a DUI arrest in 2005. Prosecutors said Haleas failed to perform a field-sobriety test and lied in his reports. As a result, they dropped more than 50 cases stemming from DUI arrests made by Haleas.
The criminal case is still pending against Haleas, who was honored three times by the Schaumburg-based Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists as the cop with the most DUI busts in Illinois.
Parker also made the private organization’s top DUI cop list when he made 153 drunken-driving arrests in 2006 — fourth-highest among Chicago officers that year, according to the group.
So how can you frame an innocent citizen if the breathalyzer shows ".03%"? Simple. You write in your arrest report, "The suspect refused to submit to breath or blood testing". Now it’s the cop’s word against an accused drunk driver. Guess which one is going to be believed? And guess which one is going to get a longer jail sentence and license suspension for "refusing"?
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