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Season Six: DIrty Badges: Getting By With Everything
169 Plays4 days ago
We are using this episode to talk about police power abuse cases in what could be an ongoing series examining more egregious cases of misconduct by law enforcement.
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Transcript
Introduction and Theme Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:01:00
Speaker
ah there's a There's this point in time that I remember where you and I sat down and we were looking at police cases. And we still have this idea that at some point we may focus on cases that involve police officers committing crimes or civil rights violations or just general Doing the wrong thing? Yeah, doing
Cycle of Bad Behavior in Police Training
00:01:25
Speaker
the wrong thing. and and Because the point of that is not to chastise the individual, right? Right. The point is to draw attention and broaden the perception of people who absorb information from cases where the police did do the wrong thing, right?
00:01:44
Speaker
Right. so they So you can recognize it. I'm of the mindset, probably more so as a coping mechanism than anything else, that A lot of people don't recognize it, including some of the officers themselves based on their training.
00:02:00
Speaker
You know, because a bad cops, they make bad cops out of the cops they train, right? And it's a never-ending cycle sometimes. Sometimes they know exactly what they're doing and they just don't care because they're just not good cops.
00:02:15
Speaker
But sometimes they don't realize the difference. And so that's our point.
Examples of Police Misconduct
00:02:20
Speaker
I just want to be clear because... I mean, I do want to put people down that are doing the wrong thing, but I, but that's not as important as making people realize it and recognize situations instead of crawling under rocks.
00:02:33
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Well, was coming at it from a couple of different perspectives and, and this is sort of how you and I have looked at it over the years. We've always tried to figure out like what is potentially straight up corruption.
00:02:46
Speaker
What is just bad coppery in general And then what is like complete incompetence as opposed to any kind of malfeasance? And unfortunately, a lot of it really is just severe incompetence.
00:03:02
Speaker
Yeah, and like I think I've run into, in the past couple years, like a lot of complacency to like like people. It's not just the person that's doing the wrong thing.
00:03:13
Speaker
It's also the fact that like the chain of command just sort of accepts it. Because there was a period of time where it was really hard to find police and fill out police forces around the country. And we've seen that peak again because of things that have happened in the last five years.
00:03:29
Speaker
One of the reasons I'm down this rabbit hole is about a year ago, i started seeing like just terrible behavior by police officers like up close and personal and like on body cam.
00:03:43
Speaker
And i had a couple of cases that like in real life, while I can't like speak exactly to the cases, like i was having to go through the steps of investigating the police, and it's become part of my full-time job, and it drives me a little crazy that I have to do that.
00:03:58
Speaker
um Because it's the last thing that I should have to be doing to figure out if ah if someone's corrupt or if someone's lazy or someone's just
Case Study: Whisper Stop Incident
00:04:06
Speaker
terrible at their job. And it's like it's frequently such a weird mixture of the three, you never quite get to the bottom of what's going on.
00:04:13
Speaker
I can give you like one example off the top of my head that like really bothered me um was an officer who kept turning their body camera off and on during what I call a whisper stop.
00:04:26
Speaker
Whisper stop is when an agency doesn't he either have jurisdiction or probable cause to to bring about an arrest, and they will call ahead to an agency that could potentially perform a traffic stop or do something else to effectuate that arrest.
00:04:46
Speaker
I'd like to say that that's actually called a bully stop. It is a bully style. And you always have to wonder, police officers are not supposed to be bullies. Right. and And that's interesting, right?
00:05:01
Speaker
ah That I would have to say a patrol cop getting a call in from another agency or however it goes down, right? Like they don't actually, I would say nine out of 10 of them don't even realize what they're doing is wrong.
00:05:14
Speaker
And let's say that I was the target of the bully stop for some reason. And I, you know, went to the lieutenant or the supervisor or the patrol cop and I said, they did something they weren't allowed to do.
00:05:28
Speaker
They would say, oh, no, they're allowed to do that. Right. And that's deeply ingrained. I know they're not allowed to do it. Right. But what I'm saying is when normal people are out there and face these types of situations and something happens that just blows your mind because your whole world just got turned upside down.
00:05:49
Speaker
A lot of people just take the supervisor's word for it. Right. Yep. And then they're like, oh, police are allowed to do that. No, they're not. I mean, we all know what our constitutional rights are. And sometimes like the higher up you go, the harder it is yeah to get somebody to admit it.
00:06:05
Speaker
Right. But you just have to hold strong. Right. But go ahead with that. But the whisper stop is a bully stop. Right. And, you know, I look at this one particular stop. I'm thinking of the person wasn't from like anywhere close to where.
00:06:22
Speaker
I live and work. They were called in for, and I don't even remember exactly what it was, but I think it was something about the headlights on their car or their windshield wipers not doing something. Like it was literally like a $5 infraction. They get pulled over for,
00:06:39
Speaker
And like we go through the whole process and like I have to do things like go pull the manual in that vehicle. Does that vehicle have like automatic ah headlamps when the windshield wipers are engaged? Like how do we end up here?
00:06:52
Speaker
And it just happened that like this particular stop had the body cameras going off and on for a couple of the officers. And what they were really doing is they were talking to another agency. and turning off the camera so that it wasn't caught on audio or video.
00:07:06
Speaker
And they stopped this person, what is essentially three times. And by three times, I mean they pulled him over for the initial stop, and then they got him out of you know the way of traffic off to this weigh station, and then they took him from this weigh station to a place they could dismantle his vehicle.
00:07:20
Speaker
What's crazy about this whole thing is like it was over methamphetamine, allegedly. And they do find some, but it's not on the body cameras. It's not covered in any of the footage of the nine or 10 officers who are end up being a part of this thing.
00:07:35
Speaker
um and a judge has to end up ruling on like, where did they go wrong? Which honestly is kind of everywhere on this particular stuff that I'm thinking of. Did they admit they were turning it off and on or was it a malfunction?
00:07:48
Speaker
It was not a malfunction. Well, I know it wasn't a malfunction, but did they say it? No, they they said that they were protecting undercover who ends up being on body camera anyways.
00:07:58
Speaker
um Right, but you know obviously if you get to pick what is right you know publicly available or not, that's logically not. That goes against the very fiber of why they're wearing body cams to begin with.
00:08:13
Speaker
It does. And that ultimately ended up being an issue, among other things. It got it kicked. And here's the crazy part about it. They do find drugs. They do find money in this instance.
00:08:25
Speaker
I can't track whether the person driving the vehicle knows about
Motivations and Consequences of Misconduct
00:08:30
Speaker
it. Or like the the potential is there for him to be kind of a patsy in different ways. I don't know which one it like he necessarily was, but he didn't seem to have the wherewithal to to plot this out himself. but Maybe he did. Maybe it's all a really good act.
00:08:47
Speaker
In which case, the officers have seriously screwed this up to the point that they can't get that guy off the street or anything related to him because of the way they've done this.
00:08:58
Speaker
By the time I catch this case and go through it all, we're a year and a half in Like, this guy's been sitting in a jail with 25 years in prison and a $500,000 fine hanging over his head for a year and a half.
00:09:11
Speaker
Right, and his entire life is basically ruined. Right. Right. And, you know, there's been other like big cases um that I'm thinking of one guy in particular, and I can't remember what state he was in, but he like got more callers than more meth arrest than like anybody ever. And come to find out he was planting the drugs.
00:09:34
Speaker
Right. And it was a disaster, right? He ruined people's lives because he wanted to climb the ranks. Yeah. And, I remember, I don't know the guy's name, but I remember in that case, the DA took action. The guy went to jail for a really long time, which is what should have happened, right?
00:09:51
Speaker
Yeah. One of the problems that we have with this case that I'm kind of running my mouth about is, like, so if that guy's not a bad guy, that means that you now have bad cops that you have to watch. And you don't know necessarily which one is which because it doesn't work out the way you see it work out on Law & Order and CSI and all those things. you know You're having to remember that this happened, document it, and then look for the next time that it could potentially happen.
00:10:18
Speaker
Correct. And so you have to think about also the motivation and that's where it matters, right? Because the motivation, what is the motivation if a cop is planting meth or concocting or creating a situation on someone, right? I don't i don't know what the motivation is. It's a power dynamic.
00:10:41
Speaker
it's a It's a literally like I'm in a position of authority and I can take anybody I want down. ah That just sounds so, like, I know you're right, that sounds so bizarre. doesn't make any sense for our police officers to be that way, though.
00:10:55
Speaker
Yeah, we've gotten that way by how we recruit officers. And I'm not saying all officers about i know lots of people. I'm just saying even the smallest percentage of people doing what you just described in terms of a power trip ruins the whole agency. Yeah.
00:11:09
Speaker
There's literally no other reason to do it. Like, you could say, and see, what they they will say is, i I knew they were doing it, and I just needed to get them off the streets. Well, if you knew they were doing it, and they really were, you could have found a legitimate way to do that.
00:11:23
Speaker
Yeah, well, they don't know this guy at all. Like, they they don't know him. yeah I suspect that this is a thing where, I try to, like, split right down the middle. And know you hate when I straddle the fence, but this this is how I, like, investigate it all.
00:11:38
Speaker
Let's say this guy buys these cars and he's told, go to this place. If you don't, we're going to hurt you. Or if you do, we're going to give you all this money or something like that. Sure. So he doesn't actually know what he's doing and he drives to three or four places.
00:11:52
Speaker
I think that one of those places was under some kind of surveillance. And at this point, I'm purely speculating. i think that like... Stop two probably is like being surveilled. And as he's heading to stop three, they try and get him, but they can't.
00:12:07
Speaker
So between stop three and stop four, that agency, who is probably a federal agency, calls in, starts calling local agencies who can potentially pull him over. And they call until they find somebody who will bend the rules to do it.
00:12:22
Speaker
Right, which is completely wrong. Right, and I think the stop in the first place was BS. So is the guy driving the truck in the wrong? Yeah, probably. He's probably, like I said, some kind of patsy.
00:12:33
Speaker
but But it doesn't really matter. Right. Then you've got all these bad cops that like pile up at the end of this and act like you know holier than thou. And one of the craziest things about this to me... I don't think it actually turned out to be methamphetamine. Like that was just what the field test quote said.
00:12:48
Speaker
it turned out to be something different. The officers getting on the stand in this case, one of them, I say officers, but one of them who was the problematic body camera guy had all the signs of someone who's doing too much Adderall.
00:13:04
Speaker
Right. So all I could think was that guy probably has a prescription. for like you know Adderall or one of the other uppers that are used to treat ADHD.
00:13:16
Speaker
And that is totally okay. But the meth is not, which is you know chemically
Child Abuse Cases by Police
00:13:24
Speaker
score all. Right, yeah. So that that's what, like seeing instances like this, and I gave you one example of probably 30 in the last year.
00:13:36
Speaker
No, it happens all the time. Yeah. And Yeah. It is wrong. And it's like, it's not just wrong. It's infuriating because like, the thing is like, I've never been anti anti-police.
00:13:47
Speaker
I am anti anybody doing just terrible things to other human beings and putting someone in prison for 25 years, if they had nothing to do with a thing is terrible. It really is. And, but ultimately, coming from the position I come from, I'm not a criminal and uh,
00:14:06
Speaker
feel like people who take on the position um that the taxpayers pay for of a law enforcement officer, they should protect and serve our population, our communities, right? yeah um Instead, it becomes a situation where I'm you have um police officers that are just literally trying to put people in jail. Right. and I see it all the time. And I understand, see, from a ah criminal's perspective, a lot of times criminals won't stand up to the police. And I'm not saying you should stand up to police necessarily when the event is, when your interaction with them is happening, because that could go bad.
00:14:48
Speaker
However, like... There's a line. It's not a line in the sand, and it doesn't move, right? There's a firm line that police can't cross, and yet it's almost like they live on the other side of that line. Yeah.
00:15:04
Speaker
And I just, I feel like, you know, one step at a time, you know, i anything that happens in my life that I can do something about, I totally try.
00:15:16
Speaker
Doesn't mean it works, right? However, police officers going into the job, they should be trained to protect and serve, not to put people in jail. And that's the only motivation that a cop could have, right?
00:15:31
Speaker
to plant drugs or to like fabricate things or you you see what I'm saying? Oh yeah. Yeah. And and that's kind of how we get to today's episode. Honestly, like what, what you're saying there is the crux of like what was pushing me down the rabbit hole.
00:15:49
Speaker
And I like one of the, one of the articles I used as a source for this is kind of, i think it's over a year old now. I was trying to like figure out if anyone was collecting information. Because like we have a we have a Brady List, which is where prosecutors and police can get on the list for potentially in the past having somehow withheld or obfuscated exculpatory information in cases.
00:16:21
Speaker
Right, which is also completely illogical. Right. In the course of justice, right? Right. Right, right. it makes no sense. It makes no sense if you're really trying to get justice, which we've broken down many times on the show, how that's not always the case. A lot of times it's the conviction rates. it's the It's something that isn't in line with what true justice is, right?
00:16:44
Speaker
Right. And if you sit down and like have a conversation, which I have in the last couple of months, with the other side, and that could be the prosecutors or their like in-house investigators or actual police agencies,
00:16:58
Speaker
like doing the job of police agencies, like there's always a justification for it. And the justifications are interesting to me because the view they have is that like some defense attorney is going to get that person off. So it's okay for them to bolster the case, even if it's absolutely trampling the person's constitutional rights or justice itself, depending on how you look at it. Except without Immunity protections, they're breaking the law just like the criminal did.
00:17:29
Speaker
i It's interesting. I made this statement earlier in the year, and um I'll stand behind it. like anyone Not to put cops down, but but I'll stand behind the statement.
00:17:40
Speaker
And that is, immunity does not affect my opinion of you. It absolutely does not. It does not change the fact that you did the wrong thing and you did something illegal. Right. So I thought like a lot of what I deal with is kind nuanced, but the article I thought I would talk about today and sort of the sprawling information around it is a fantastic rabbit hole.
00:18:06
Speaker
If people want to go down this and just see how weird things can get. And so it's a Washington Post article that like I grabbed And the the header on it was abused by the badge. And the people that were writing on it were ah Jessica Contrera, Jen Abelson, John D. Harden, Hayden Godfrey, and Nate Jones.
00:18:29
Speaker
And the reason I chose this, I was looking for something a little different because we had talked about John Burr's recently and like, I find cases fascinating when prosecutors are then having to prosecute police and like everything gets kind of sticky. And I was like, I wonder if anybody's keeping one of those Brady brady lists. or like You could potentially have other lists based on other Supreme Court holdings.
00:18:56
Speaker
But one of the things they mentioned is that Bowling Green State University, like the big university, they are keeping something called the Henry A. Wallace Police Crime Database.
00:19:07
Speaker
And this database documents summary information 19,405 criminal arrest cases between and involving fifteen thousand seven hundred and sixty nine individual nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers a lot of words to say they are tracking what cops do to get arrested.
Case Study: North Carolina Officer
00:19:41
Speaker
So first of all, the fact that we have 15,769 police arrests is wild to me. I know we have a lot of police officers.
00:19:51
Speaker
ah That's a 15-year period, so it's over 1,000 people per year. And... They break it out like this. If you go to Bowling Green, which is it's at policecrime.bgsu.edu slash home slash crimes.
00:20:07
Speaker
um I think if you go to so ah slash home on that, it'll give you the overview. And it says, you know, alcohol related offenses, drunkenness or liquor law violation, which and neither here nor there those.
00:20:21
Speaker
Assault offenses, driving offenses, drug offenses, fraud offenses, gambling offenses, homicide offenses, larceny or theft offenses, offenses against, quote, the organization, end quote, sex offenses, other offenses, and other offense characteristics.
00:20:38
Speaker
But i think this is worth talking about from the perspective of there's a database where you can go look up individuals or offenses. You can look up victims and what's happened to them. Right. And I just want to, I want to make the distinction here that I completely understand that cops are people.
00:21:00
Speaker
There's a lot of things cops can do that humans do that I don't necessarily feel like it's necessarily corruption in the department they work for. Like it's just them being a stupid human. Like you were saying, like drunk driving or whatever. Right. Right.
00:21:17
Speaker
right um And so I'm not trying, I don't want to like necessarily put cops down ah when they make mistakes or it's more of a professional capacity thing.
00:21:30
Speaker
Right. think so. Yeah. I mean, obviously I don't want people to commit violent crimes against anybody and I don't want anybody committing them, including law enforcement. But like, this is, I don't think this filters out. I mean, it does, you can put filters on the database, but it,
00:21:45
Speaker
It's literally every single person who was a sworn officer, i think, during the time they were and they were arrested, right? Correct. Yeah, yeah. this In most of these cases, it's an arrest. doesn't you know it's Some are on duty, some are off duty, but it's an arrest while they are an active sworn police officer.
00:22:06
Speaker
That ah largely in most of these instances, it should end their career. It does not always, but it should. Right. You're right. Exactly. So i I kind of I'm jumping around here because like my topic is not necessarily based on any individual thing that's going on. It is kind of strung together by this Abuse by the Badge article that I want to talk about.
00:22:29
Speaker
and then i want to talk about some of the stuff that's in the database. And then I pulled some individual articles that I will kind of cite as we go because some of these cases are fascinating to me. So this gets published in the Washington Post, June 12th of 2024.
00:22:47
Speaker
And it opens up pretty low key. It says they served in police departments, big and small. They were new recruits and seasoned veterans, patrol officers and chiefs of police. They understood the power of their guns and badges. In many cases, they use that very power to find and to silence their victims.
00:23:05
Speaker
A Washington Post investigation has found that over the past few decades, hundreds of law enforcement officers in the United States have sexually abused children, while officials at every level of the criminal justice system have failed to protect the kids, to punish the abusers, and to prevent additional crimes.
00:23:23
Speaker
Police and sheriff's departments have enabled predators by botching background checks, ignoring red flags, and mishandling investigations. Accused cops have used their knowledge of the legal system to stall cases, get charges lowered, or evade convictions.
00:23:38
Speaker
Prosecutors have given generous plea deals to officers who admitted to raping or groping minors. Judges have allowed many convicted officers to avoid prison time. All the while, children in every state and the District of Columbia have continued to be targeted, groomed, and violated by officers sworn to keep them safe.
00:23:58
Speaker
Okay. They go on to talk about the fact that 1,800 officers, not including anyone in a federal capacity, just state and local officers, have been charged with crimes involving child sexual abuse from 2005 to And that's the topic for today, because i pulled three or four of these cases to talk about amongst the larger problem, because one of them blew mind.
00:24:37
Speaker
my um You can find this out at NBC. It's kind of all over the place. Charlotte Observer has one of the initial stories on it. um it The sources I pulled are largely in January of 2019.
00:24:55
Speaker
And I think the basis for those stories is there's some lawsuits that come about. But here's a summary of it. And we'll talk about this one first.
00:25:07
Speaker
the The article title from NBC is Officer Offered to Mentor Missing 13-Year-Old After Finding Her. It has a subtitle. We'll get to that in a second.
00:25:19
Speaker
But it says a police officer in North Carolina is accused of raping and impregnating the teenager he was once to a once assigned to find in a missing persons investigation.
00:25:31
Speaker
The girl was 13 at the time, was reported missing in 2015, and Lowell, North Carolina police officer James Paul Blair was put on the case and eventually found the young teen.
00:25:44
Speaker
That was reported by the Charlotte Observer. Not long after finding her, court documents say he started visiting her home saying he wanted to be her mentor. It was part of Blair's duties to be a law enforcement mentor and to work with children.
00:25:59
Speaker
But that is not what happened, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit says that Blair started showing up at the girl's house late at night, giving the girl candy, and offering to drive her around in his police cruiser.
00:26:13
Speaker
It was during some of the cruiser rides that Blair is accused of raping the young teen while he was still on duty. The North Carolina family filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against a city near Charlotte, North Carolina, saying that Blair had committed statutory rape because the minor legally could not consent to sex.
00:26:34
Speaker
He was accused of raping her when she was 13 years old. She discovered that she was pregnant in 2016 and delivered a baby boy in 2017. He was eventually charged with statutory rape.
00:26:46
Speaker
He was fired days later, and he pleaded guilty in 2017, and he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. That's according to a paper called the Gaston Gazette. This lawsuit also said that Blair had sexual contact with multiple female minors prior to 2015 and that the city and the police chief are liable for this conduct because they negligently hired him.
00:27:09
Speaker
An attorney for the city and chief said that his clients would deny any liability for Blair's actions. Okay. I picked this because it's kind of sensational.
00:27:22
Speaker
little bit. But what it really is, is it's hard to deny the fact that if you are having sex as 40-year-old police officer with a 13-year-old girl, you know what you're doing is incredibly wrong.
00:27:52
Speaker
And... I don't think there's any way around that, is there? There's not. um I imagine that the officer thinks there is. i guess.
00:28:04
Speaker
I mean, I don't know. I don't know what the justification would be, but he's ah he's clearly abusing his position of power. he um now granted... I mean, he's a bad person, but he made a decision, right?
00:28:19
Speaker
The reason that a child in this situation can't consent is because they can't say no to the cop to begin with. Right. Okay. And they're a child. And i don't know what you could say.
00:28:33
Speaker
i imagine he said nothing. That's my guess. I don't know, but I imagine he he has had nothing to say because even if he were to be like, oh, I was in love with her. I mean, like, So my understanding is that
00:28:51
Speaker
his justification prior to pleading guilty was that he thought he was in a relationship with her.
00:29:02
Speaker
Yeah, so that's really scary. um And I don't know if that's just lip service, right? Yeah. like Because that makes it possibly sound less um degrading than it was, but not really, right? Right.
00:29:17
Speaker
I mean, it's unlikely. Now, granted, i feel like not saying anything would probably be the best course of action. um Sometimes... you know, depending on the situation, you can't get away with that. But essentially he was taking a position of trust as a mentor for the police department because she, I assume was some sort of runaway missing kid. Right.
00:29:40
Speaker
Yeah. That was, it was an ongoing runaway situation and that's how he weasels his way in. Yes. Right. And so he's taking advantage of, um, a child who's, uh, one way or the other,
00:29:53
Speaker
suffering from some instability, right? Whether it's mental or physical or whatever. um Yeah, there's something happening here that the the child is unhappy in trying to change that by running away.
00:30:06
Speaker
Correct. and And so he's, instead of guiding her to how to, you know, find her footing, he is making the situation exponentially worse.
00:30:20
Speaker
Yeah, yes, he is. And... There is absolutely nothing anybody would ever say to me that would change my mind on that.
00:30:32
Speaker
If you say that, like, oh, when she turned 20, then, like, you know, the 50-year-old, they got married, fine, but not really. i mean, it's not it's not okay, and it's also not the child's fault.
00:30:49
Speaker
Correct. um An article from ABC 11 back in 2017 gives us kind of a glancing overview. It looks like they're sharing out of the Raleigh-Durham area from WSOC down in Charlotte, which is more of the local Charlotte news.
00:31:05
Speaker
But it was a pretty good summary. So March 9th of 2017, they have a Wire article that just says – North Carolina police officer has pleaded guilty after being accused of impregnating a 14-year-old.
00:31:20
Speaker
So we clarify it like the 14 versus 13-year-old is going to make a difference. I don't see it making a difference for me personally. That doesn't matter. Right. to me, it started when she was 13, but she didn't get pregnant until she was 14. That's what it sounds like. Right. So it says James Blair, former officer in Lowell, will have to spend at least 12 years in prison.
00:31:40
Speaker
He will also have to wear an ankle monitor for the rest of his life, as well as register as a sex offender. So he's going to be on an SBM system which is satellite-based monitoring, um says Lowell is located west of Charlotte, near Gastonia.
00:31:56
Speaker
ah Blair was taken into custody after being arrested at the teen's house. SBI agents were there talking to the family when Blair showed up.
00:32:08
Speaker
He was charged with a single count of statutory rape, and more charges will follow, as officials said. I don't see where they filed anything more, but his bond for just that one count of statutory rape was a million dollars.
00:32:19
Speaker
The mother had told WSOC, he tore my life apart. She said the veteran officer came to her home asking to connect with her 14-year-old daughter who had run away before and her sibling.
00:32:32
Speaker
She said that Blair would visit them often and even took them on a trip. But the way the mom finds out is mentioned in this article, which is what brought me back over here.
00:32:42
Speaker
says the mom discovered there were text messages on the daughter's phone indicating that she was pregnant and that James Blair was the father.
Comparative Analysis of Misconduct Cases
00:32:50
Speaker
She said that Blair had inappropriate contact with her daughter at his home in his patrol car.
00:32:57
Speaker
And she tells the Charlotte News that he confessed to her. He told me, this is her quote, he told me he took her virginity. He told me it was his baby.
00:33:08
Speaker
He told me things happened. He said he was so sorry and kept saying, please forgive him. i like um so this becomes a cornerstone of that Abusing the Badge article.
00:33:21
Speaker
I think you can see why, right? Yeah, because he's like... insane it's really hard to talk your way out of a dna test that proves that this child giving birth to a child like doesn't sound like he was even trying like he's no it's this typical like i'm telling you he's asking for forgiveness right yeah how serious can you be about asking for forgiveness for impregnating a 14 year old Well, he's not very serious about it because what he's really trying to do with this conversation with the mom.
00:33:57
Speaker
No, it's not just that. He's basically asked this girl's mother, can we please get rid of the baby or I'm going to lose my life. I've lost my life. And the mother's quote was, how do I kill a baby? I'm not going to kill a baby. I don't believe in abortion.
00:34:13
Speaker
which is none Which is neither here or there. It's her personal whatever. But, like, this guy had the wherewithal that, like, he's asking for forgiveness. But is he really asking for forgiveness? Is he also asking for an abortion?
00:34:27
Speaker
No, he's not. It's a completely fake. But what I'm saying is this guy, middle-aged law enforcement officer, he thinks that he can do whatever he wants, say, I'm sorry at the end of the day, and he will convince the situation to get fixed to the least of his detriment. Right? Right. Right.
00:34:45
Speaker
Okay. And nobody gets to live that way. Nobody gets to barrel through life and take, you know, and you know, Oh, the baby's going to ruin my life. No, sir. You ruined your life.
00:34:56
Speaker
Correct. Okay. And at the end of the day, that isn't owning it. And it's not a real apology. Okay. It's not. And the gall of apologizing for something like that, it makes the offense itself even more insulting because you don't apologize for things like that. You don't do them.
00:35:18
Speaker
If you can see enough to apologize later, you knew from the jump, you shouldn't have done it. Right. Right. Which I don't know what the problem is. I guarantee you this is not the only child that he assaulted.
00:35:33
Speaker
I'm just saying. i know I don't know that he's been charged with anything else, but I doubt it only happened once. Right. um This was just the time he got caught. He thought he could bully his way out of it, which just sounds like what he was trying to do.
00:35:47
Speaker
But it's disgusting. All of it's disgusting. And ended he ended up causing so much more damage to the community he's supposed to protect and serve, which he's not doing at all.
00:36:02
Speaker
And that's, so that's how he ended up here. Like talking about this guy is because of what he did. i you know, I dug through his story here and I do want to say he is still in prison.
00:36:14
Speaker
So he went in, from what I can tell from like public record search, uh, March 9th, 2017 was his official begin date of his sentence. Um, His projected release date is May 6, 2029.
00:36:32
Speaker
So that's one of the reasons he sort of comes up here. um That's 12-year minimum. But he is sentenced to 12 to 19 years. He basically pleads out to statutory sex offense of a child who is under 15 but over 6. They differentiate in North Carolina.
00:36:52
Speaker
This is a B-1 felony that he allegedly committed July 14, 2016. sixty He has two infractions. He's in Pamlico Correctional Institute.
00:37:05
Speaker
He has one attempted class B offense, which I can't remember exactly what that is in North Carolina.
Systemic Issues and Lack of Accountability
00:37:10
Speaker
That was back when he first got into prison, which ah can't imagine being a police officer in a prison is any fun at all.
00:37:19
Speaker
ah This is going to be like he's going to be in close custody his whole life. Right, because he's also in there for um a child a sexual abuse of a child. Right, exactly.
00:37:31
Speaker
And then during the pandemic, or right before the pandemic, in February 2020, he ended up with an infraction charge of offering or accepting a bribe related to staff.
00:37:44
Speaker
I thought that was interesting. So, you know, I wanted to talk about him a little bit. And then I have like this stack. He becomes the the centerpiece of this abuse by the badge article, which if you have a WAPO Washington Post subscription, look that up. I think you can probably find that in some versions of the Internet Archive.
00:38:03
Speaker
So you don't have to see the paywall. I know Washington Post sometimes has a paywall for people. Another one i wanted to mention, i can't remember if he pops up in this article or not right this second. It's been a minute since I like, there's a lot of officers names in here.
00:38:18
Speaker
um There was one I wanted to mention out of Suffolk, Massachusetts. I saw this July 2nd, 2025. So it's a little bit outside of what they're doing there, but because of the date on the the crime, which is further back in time, that's how we end up with it.
00:38:36
Speaker
I wanted to mention this because this is a guy named Paul Downey, and there's another... officer here that's been charged with an offense against an eight-year-old that I'm hunting.
00:38:48
Speaker
And it may come up in a future episode, because I think this is going to be one of the things that we start to cover a little more, is like things that police officers do. This ah comes out of CBS News up at WBZ by Louisa Muller and Tammy Matassa.
00:39:02
Speaker
And the title is this veteran Boston Police Sergeant Paul Downey charged with child rape. says a Boston police officer of over 30 years has been charged with child rape after being accused of paying a 14-year-old for sexual acts.
00:39:15
Speaker
ah Sergeant Paul Downey appeared in Boston Municipal cho Court in Dorchester Tuesday. He was ordered held on $250,000 cash bail A judge had approved an arrest warrant who was charged with four counts of rape of a child aggravated by age difference, two counts of engaging in sexual conduct with a child under 18 for a fee, two counts of enticement of a child under 18 to engage in commercial sexual activity,
00:39:41
Speaker
Downey was scheduled to be arraigned on Monday afternoon, but was held without bail until Tuesday because no defense attorney was available. Downey allegedly met a 14-year-old boy on the dating app Grindr, and the two moved the conversation over to Snapchat.
00:39:57
Speaker
according to a statement of the case provided by the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office. The 58-year-old Downey is accused of meeting this 14-year-old twice in the spring at different Boston locations, paying the child for sexual acts.
00:40:10
Speaker
The boy allegedly provided state police detectives with a description of Downey and a partial license plate number, which was tracked to a parking area for the Boston police. Investigators used digital records to track down a Snapchat account and claimed the boy identified him out of a photo lineup with a, quote, 90% certainty, end quote. ah Go online, parents. Google what sites the children are going to the most.
00:40:34
Speaker
ah Gather that information, said Audrey Morrissey. It's terrifying that a grown man had access to this young boy. ah Audrey Morrissey is the executive director of My Life, My Choice, a nonprofit that works to prevent child's exploitation.
00:40:49
Speaker
Who has the power of the child or the groomer? The answer is always the adult. ah Sources tell WBZ's I-Team that Downey used to be an instructor at the Boston Police Academy.
00:41:01
Speaker
According to Boston Police, he joined the force in 1991. These charges are obviously very troubling, and our thoughts are with any alleged victims. We have faith in the Massachusetts State Police and the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office to conduct a thorough investigation.
00:41:16
Speaker
The officer was immediately placed on administrative leave. This is according to Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox. On Wednesday, the Peace Officers Standards Training Commission, or POST, suspended donny Downey's law enforcement so certification. he's And it says he's due back in court later in the summer.
00:41:35
Speaker
I bring that up because parts of that are a lot more than what happened in the North Carolina case. ah But this guy gets out on $250,000 believe. And yeah i read about these different cases where an officer is involved with harming a child.
00:41:55
Speaker
And i know there was a case um in the database from August of 2020, a officer was arrested for having sex with an eight-year-old.
00:42:06
Speaker
They resigned, they ended convicted. i think it's a guilty plea that causes the conviction and they get 120 in prison. 10 years. That doesn't sound like enough for an officer who has had sex with an eight-year-old. I believe it's the guilty plea that makes that happen.
00:42:24
Speaker
Yeah, probably. Because, i mean, in in the scope of things, I agree. i feel like it's just as I mean, it's a violent that's a violent crime, even if the act itself isn't considered violent or whatever. it's You're ruining a child's life and you're putting them under significant distress. But, you know legislation has to decide what the punishments are for the crimes. This becomes sort of a ah geographical hit or miss for me because i like I was trying to pull from what this article is offering up, which is this deep dive into what officers are doing.
00:43:00
Speaker
But I found myself gravitating a little more towards what are the individual states doing? Does that make sense? Yeah. One of the articles I pulled ah based on the name from you know the the article itself that we're talking about, I pulled a secondary article from the AP Wire, and it just said it's from the National Death Staff back August 13th of 2019. It says, detective who raped victim while investigating her case gets three years in prison.
00:43:31
Speaker
So that goes like this. A Los Angeles County sheriff's detective has been sentenced to prison for raping a 15-year-old girl he met while investigating her report of being sexually assaulted.
00:43:43
Speaker
This guy's name is Neil Kimball. He was 46 years old back in 2019 when this article popped out. So he's... six years older now, 52, of Agora, was sentenced to three years on Thursday.
00:43:57
Speaker
He pled guilty last month to unlawful sexual intercourse and committing a lewd act with a child. The crimes occurred in Ventura County, California. Prosecutors say that Kimball befriended the girl in 2017 after she reported being sexually assaulted in neighboring Los Angeles County.
00:44:16
Speaker
Kimball was charged with raping the victim while she was tied or bound. So I am guessing they mean handcuffs. um He was also accused of witness intimidation by threat or force.
00:44:28
Speaker
The girl did not report the encounter. A different officer took over the case about a year later. Her father told the new investigator but about this assault having had happened.
00:44:40
Speaker
In addition to this jail time, he has three years, he has 36 months. Kimball must also pay the teenager $50,000 and register as a sex offender. And this is interesting to me.
00:44:51
Speaker
It says that KABC TV, so the ABC outlet out there, they say that the sheriff's department is reviewing as many as 300 cases that Kimball had handled for the Special Victims Bureau to determine whether any other misconduct had taken place.
00:45:10
Speaker
That's crazy. he gets three years.
00:45:14
Speaker
Well, not to mention, he gets three years and he has to pay the victim $50,000. Right. right So I feel like maybe the wires got crossed and the wrong message is happening here.
00:45:28
Speaker
ah Definitely. i mean, he never should have been part of a special victims unit, clearly. um i don't really know how you suss that out because...
00:45:40
Speaker
I can't get behind. There is no, there is no leeway on the, there's no, what's the word? I'm sure, I don't know that he got up and was like, I'm doing the wrong thing. i don't know that he could somehow justify it. Right.
00:45:56
Speaker
I don't know. But like, there is no justification for it. You're lying to yourself. Well, I think the only thing that they can really say is kind of what I mentioned earlier had been confided in me on one of the other cases. And that is like, they can say essentially i was in love, which is BS.
00:46:17
Speaker
I mean, these are children. well it doesn't It just doesn't matter. Like it doesn't, it's it like if you're in love with a kid and you're a grown adult, you're a pervert. Correct. Yeah.
00:46:28
Speaker
So it doesn't matter. Correct. And and it's, um but you know, and I can't, but I do understand, but one of the ah previous articles that was like, you know, who's, who is responsible for it? It is always the adult.
00:46:44
Speaker
Yes. Always the adult. It's never the child's fault. And that's probably more from a legal point of view, but there's a reason why, um even if a child, a child is, you know, agreeing to it, like they can't, their brains are not they are not at a level where they can give any sort of consent because of different dynamics that come into play. And with police, like grown adults do what police are are telling them to do. Okay. So a child definitely will not feel like they have the ability to say no.
00:47:22
Speaker
And, you know, just in general, I mean, I i can see exactly how that goes wildly out of control. in an in an encounter with police, there are very few people that can be a law enforcement officer and not abuse that.
00:47:39
Speaker
And I realize a lot of people will say, well, I wouldn't do that. Well, have you been in the situation? Are you sure? Because I feel like some very well-meaning officers could, there's something about it that just drives, it makes somebody feel good. It's a power thing, right? Yeah. and when you're in the middle of the encounter, you lose yourself in it sometimes.
00:48:04
Speaker
And I'm just saying, like, it can get out of control really fast and you've got to have your boundaries. And if you can say, oh, I'm in love with a 15-year-old and you're a 45-year-old man, I mean, dude, you've got a problem.
Legal and Personal Impact of Misconduct
00:48:19
Speaker
Yeah, and like so there's a lawsuit in this case, in the and Neil Kimball case. And that lawsuit basically is recounted a couple of different ways.
00:48:32
Speaker
WitnessLA.com put out an article, and this is a little later. This is in 2020. It's in August of 2020 by Celeste Freeman.
00:48:42
Speaker
It says, LA County agrees to pay $5.5 million dollars to a teenager in violent rape case involving... LASD detective with two alleged prior incidents. So I thought I'd bring that up here because, you know, once it hits the mainstream and gets a little infamy behind it, it's hard to sort out what's Like really happening. But I feel like once you get people working out lawsuits, sometimes you can glean some of the facts back.
00:49:09
Speaker
um It says Tuesday, August 4, 2020, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors settled a high ticket lawsuit against L.A. County and the L.A. County Sheriff's Department for $5.5 million. dollars The settlement was made on behalf of a young woman identified as Jane Doe, and this was to protect her privacy.
00:49:25
Speaker
In the civil rights complaint, Jane Doe's attorneys, which is a group that includes famed victims' rights lawyer Gloria Allred and other partners in her firm, which is why, you know, that's why I say, like, some of this infamy can make these cases a little crazy.
00:49:39
Speaker
But they describe in this complaint how a detective in the sex crimes unit of the L.A. Sheriff's Department forcibly raped Jane, who was then 15 years old. The alleged rape occurred after the detective had been assigned to investigate a previous sexual assault that the girl had reportedly endured, but could not bring herself to talk about until the detective persuaded her to trust him.
00:49:58
Speaker
Also, there were other alleged on-duty incidents of sexual impropriety by the detective in the years before he met Jane. Yet no one in an official capacity appeared to view these allegations as worthy of note.
00:50:12
Speaker
Here's the story. The events on which Jane's lawsuit is based occurred in November 2017 during the term of former L.A. County Sheriff Jim McDonnell. Jane does part of the story actually began several months earlier when her dad learned that his daughter, who was 14 at the time, had been raped.
00:50:29
Speaker
As is often true with those who have been sexually assaulted, Jane couldn't stand to tell her father or anyone else the details, only that the rape had occurred and who had reportedly done it to her. Jane's dad, who is called de John Doe in these articles, reported the sexual assault to the sheriff's department and the case was assigned to Detective Neil David Kimball to investigate.
00:50:49
Speaker
Jane and her father met Detective Kendall for the first time at a local Starbucks. Kimball wore casual civilian clothing for their meeting, hoping to make the girl feel more at ease.
00:51:00
Speaker
Yet, as has been the case with her father, Jane could not bring herself to discuss the details of the rape. She could do little more than to say that it definitely had happened. Before Kimball left the meeting, Jane's dad told the detective that it might help if he took Jane on a, quote, ride-along sometime in the future.
00:51:15
Speaker
The father hoped that if his daughter was able to trust the deputy, that she might open up enough to explain the details of her attack, which would presumably help with the case. So with that, Detective Kimball took Jane on a series of four ride-alongs each time with her father's permission.
00:51:29
Speaker
The strategy seemed to be effective. During the third of the four ride-alongs, Jane Doe asked Kimball if the person who had raped her had been arrested and was in jail yet. The detective reportedly told the girl, no, not yet, but he was encouraging. He said, we're working on it.
00:51:44
Speaker
After this assurance, Jane told Kimball that she thought she felt safe enough to tell him about the details of her rape. So she did. After ride-along three, Detective Kimball asked Jane to accompany him on one last ride-along, which took place in November of 2017. And again, Jane Doe's dad gave her permission to go with Neil Kimball.
00:52:05
Speaker
In the case of their three previous drives, Kimball had reportedly driven Jane around in public areas, but this time was different. According to the complaint for ride number four, when the detective arrived in the late afternoon to pick Jane up, although for other ride-alongs, he had always dressed in street clothes, this time he was wearing his L.A. County Sheriff's uniform, featured his badge, and his gun.
00:52:28
Speaker
It was the one and only time that Jane had seen Kimball in uniform. In addition to the change in his way of dress, ah accordingly, Detective Kimball's actions were also allegedly different.
00:52:41
Speaker
For one thing, he stopped at a store to purchase some unnamed items. And then, although he works and lives in Los Angeles County, Detective Kimball drove Jane around in some of the less populated areas of Camarillo.
00:52:54
Speaker
finally winding up on a dirt road, at the end of which an RV was parked. Detective Kimball told Jane that this was a place where he'd like to go to, quote, chill out from his family, end quote.
00:53:05
Speaker
When the two entered this RV, Kimball reportedly had also brought a brown paper bag holding his recent purchases, which turned out to be bottles of beer. When inside, Kimball asked Jane if she'd mind if he drank a bit.
00:53:20
Speaker
Jane said, no, as long as you're able to drive. Next, according to the complaint, Kimball offered her a beer. When she declined, he reportedly opened a second beer anyways and gave it to the 15-year-old.
00:53:32
Speaker
Then, according to the civil complaint, the uniformed detective thanked her for, quote, drinking with him. The detective trotted out the worst kind of cliche and told the teenager he was lonely because his wife was working and his daughter had gone away to college.
00:53:46
Speaker
But Jane did not want to drink. So when Kimball again urged her to drink the beer, according to the complaint, the teenager expressed her discomfort and asked him to take her home, saying she didn't feel safe.
00:53:58
Speaker
Instead, this supposed protector allegedly assured the girl that he wasn't going to, quote, hurt her and that everything will be okay. Starting to become freaked out, Jane reportedly got up and tried to get to her phone in order to call someone for help.
00:54:11
Speaker
It was at this moment that Kimball of allegedly grabbed Jane before she could make the call. put her on the RV's bed, and when she struggled away from him, he pulled out his handcuffs and attached them to her wrists.
00:54:25
Speaker
Jane reportedly screamed and pleaded for him to let her go, and instead, Detective Kimball allegedly proceeded to forcibly have sex with a 15-year-old while she was restrained by handcuffs.
00:54:37
Speaker
After the assault was over, the detective pulled his sidearm, handed it to Jane, and told her, if she didn't like what had happened, she could use the gun and just kill herself.
00:54:49
Speaker
He reportedly added that if she ever said anything to anyone about what had happened in the ah RV, that he was going to use the gun to kill her. Jane and her father did not report this assault Nearly a year later, when Kimball was reportedly on leave from work for unrelated reasons, a new detective took over Kimball's case and began calling those involved one by one.
00:55:11
Speaker
Jane's father told the new detective about what had been done to his daughter by a detective that she had felt she could trust. Kimball was arrested on November 16, 2018, after a 20-year career with the department and a month-long investigation.
00:55:27
Speaker
um So one of the things they throw in here is interesting. And again, this is witness LA. um It says, as it happens, as mentioned earlier, this was not the first time that detective Kimball had been accused of sexual improprieties while on duty.
00:55:43
Speaker
By the time he was charged with raping Jane go, this was going to be allegation number three and February, 2009, four years before he was promoted to special victims unit, a woman said he grabbed her hand and attempted to make her touch his genitals and other related sexual actions.
00:56:01
Speaker
This allegedly occurred when the woman had asked to use the bathroom after Kimball and his partner had stopped her and several of her friends outside a travel inn. Kimball ended up following the woman and her friends inside the hotel and a allegedly then began making advances, including telling the women they should get into the hotel's jacuzzi.
00:56:19
Speaker
the women said they were able to pull away The woman said she was able to pull away from the detective's grasp, and Kimball eventually backed off. According to the LA Times' Maya Lau, LA County prosecutors found, quote, insufficient evidence.
00:56:34
Speaker
So they decided not to pursue this 2009 incident. And in four years, in 2013, Kimball joined the elite special victims unit. A year later, there was another case of allegedly inappropriate sexual behavior,
00:56:49
Speaker
This second set of actions involved an L.A. fashion designer who told the Daily Beast that she had tried to warn the L.A. County Sheriff's Department about Kimball in 2014, a year after his promotion, and three years before he allegedly raped Jane Doe.
00:57:03
Speaker
According to this designer, Kimball was assigned to investigate her alleged rape case, but in the course of meeting with her, Kimball repeatedly made inappropriate and suggestive remarks that He made flirtatious comments, accusing her of liking her alleged assailant, and even encouraging her to go back to see him so that maybe next time they could have sex more, quote, gently.
00:57:28
Speaker
There's more to this story if you want to look it up about Neil David Kimball, but the bottom line is it is absolutely horrible what this man did.
00:57:40
Speaker
And i think he's the most egregious of the bunch, just for today, from the perspective that he actively sought out to be a part of the Special Victims Unit as a rapist.
00:57:51
Speaker
Well, I mean, do you think that that's what he had? Do you think he thought that of himself? I don't know what he thought of himself. Like... he taught He exploited victims, right? Yeah, he was definitely exploiting them. But he had to, well, I could be wrong, but he had to somehow think it was okay for some reason. And so just to be clear, the ah perhaps you should go back to see your assailant and next time you can have like consensual sex that's more gent, he'll be gentler.
00:58:26
Speaker
That is like blatant misogyny, right? Oh, of course. Yes. And that's all it does. It's, it's, it's minimizing a violent crime. And like, how does that person that even that that could even come into his mind to say that to a victim, how does that guy end up on the special victims unit? Like, how is it that that isn't squashed immediately?
00:58:53
Speaker
Right now I do understand why, Some of the complaints that were sort of made against him, he was just be acting inappropriately, but it seemed like it was sort of at a distance.
00:59:05
Speaker
Yeah. I still think that blocks you from being and on the special victims unit if you know it happened. I mean, yes, but at the same time, i don't know what both sides of the story were, right? That's true. like And so because of that, unless there is some... so Because some people...
00:59:26
Speaker
men and women are just, they're either awkward or inappropriate, right? Yeah, oh yeah. and And they're not even like, it's not even in their mind that they're like, that they're, you know, deviant.
00:59:39
Speaker
yeah But the behavior can come across that way. And it's just really just awkwardness. And I feel like that could have, I don't know what exactly happened, but based on what they said, ah you know, nobody got attacked, right?
00:59:52
Speaker
It was more of a like, what the heck is this dude doing situation? Now, the other, the situation where he was telling the victim she should like she liked her salient assailant or whatever. Like that was, that's crazy. i have no idea that that dude shouldn't be part of the special victims unit for sure.
01:00:13
Speaker
it should be blatantly obvious, right? Like this is not a personality trait that can be overlooked when we're talking about somebody who's dealing with sexual assault victims.
01:00:25
Speaker
You could disagree that it's a rape, but you're never going to like, talk a victim into not believing that they were raped. Like, that's wrong. And he must be a real bag of poo to ah exploit sexual assault victims, especially the ones that are underage. With the Jane Doe case, I would have to say that that is one of the worst abuses of power
01:00:59
Speaker
that I've ever heard of a law enforcement officer taking. He gained trust with her father. he took a traumatized child and traumatized her further.
01:01:16
Speaker
and i don't know exactly like, you know, if he was like, you can take my gun and kill yourself. destroying all the hope she could have possibly had, like, as far as, like, that's how she's going to be treated.
01:01:31
Speaker
And it went so far beyond just being, like, a perverted jerk who is a criminal to being, like, it was vindictive almost. It it was weird. That's a weird thing that's happening there.
01:01:46
Speaker
and You know, unfortunately, I wish that the little girl would have just shot him. But, you know, it's better that that didn't happen because he got called out for what he had done. But, you know, when you're in that position as a child a female child, like, you're stuck. She was stuck.
01:02:05
Speaker
And that is so incredibly wrong. He blatantly abused his power. And I imagine he did it under the guise that, like, there was nothing that could be done about it. Right?
01:02:16
Speaker
Yeah. Because otherwise, why would you do that? I can't imagine like anything being justifiable in terms of like what this guy was doing.
01:02:28
Speaker
I tried to look up more about Neil David Kimball. He's not on any sex offender registry. I don't know how that would work. I also tried to look him up from the perspective of Like, would there be a reason for him to have had an appeal or anything, and I can't find it?
01:02:47
Speaker
He did plead guilty, so I assume he waived his right to appeal. he dead? That's what I think happened to him with no obituary. I don't know that. Because I see that um on August 8, 2019, Kimball was ordered, i guess this is after pleading, pleading he was ordered to register as a sex offender.
01:03:10
Speaker
That's what I thought. Yeah, it was ordered. So I did try and like keep tabs on a couple of the people. and I i ah mentioned the infractions earlier in the episode, and I do want to drop back in and say this.
01:03:22
Speaker
I did figure out what some of the infractions were. There's an article by Adam Lawson. I figured out what one of them was. And that is that James Paul Blair, the other guy, the North Carolina cop, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison,
01:03:37
Speaker
The agreement came with him making no contact with that girl for the rest of his life. And he had been violating those restrictions. According to the victim's mother, ah she had begged and asked for them to stop.
01:03:53
Speaker
And they've never stopped. And by that, she means these letters that were coming out. She said she's called the prison several times and letters keep getting out. Every time I push back out of my mind, he just continually does this.
01:04:06
Speaker
At the time that she's saying this, the child is 15 turning 16. And she the mom is raising the the her granddaughter or the baby from this. She says that ah James Blair sent a letter to one of his family members with instructions for them to forward it to the team.
01:04:21
Speaker
So I'm guessing that other bribery charges him still trying to get in contact with her, which is- So he's crazy. Yeah, there's something wrong with him. like he's like He's one of those weirdos who does not understand that like this is not like his legitimate heir or something just because he impregnated teenager.
01:04:38
Speaker
Well, okay, so it it's ah it's so interesting because it fits with a um ah law enforcement officer's personality to feel like the teenage child that they ah both sexually and emotionally abused is their perfect partner right right yeah because you know she did everything he told her to do right and right and he was imagining like this whole relationship and none of that was real right she was doing what she had to do because he was a cop right and a lot of times it's it's so amazing to me how these
01:05:23
Speaker
just really not good guys can end up like, oh, you know, I'm in love with her. And like, you're literally, you're you don't know anything about her. She's acted the way she's had to to survive this situation.
01:05:37
Speaker
And she's a i guess i I guess by now she's not underage any longer, but it's amazing to me that what shines through there, right? Yeah.
01:05:49
Speaker
Because it's like, If I can have the power dynamic in the relationship, I'm completely in love with that person. And it's almost like it completely escapes their mind that like, oh, that's not who that person is at all. They were just placating me so they didn't get in trouble. Yeah.
01:06:06
Speaker
And that's not any, that's nothing, right? It's not a relationship at all. And ah it's like, they're so blinded by it that maybe they truly don't realize it. I just, I can't imagine that like when you're weighing out your options here, like, let me have this fantasy relationship with somebody who can't tell me no. Right.
01:06:27
Speaker
Until I get caught and go to jail, I just don't see where that's a good idea at all. Now, on the other side of that, a lot of this stuff has happened and there has been no repercussions for the law enforcement officer involved,
Conclusion: Addressing Police Misconduct
01:06:39
Speaker
right? Right.
01:06:40
Speaker
So at least we're seeing it now, right? Yeah. Yeah. But the abuse of power is a very real thing. and it's um And it's human nature. It's almost like they have to like consciously not abuse the power, which is, I don't think it's trained well enough or often enough. or some There's some sort of gap there, right?
01:07:06
Speaker
As far as how... how A police officer could possibly think like this is a real relationship. They should be trained to realize it's absolutely not a real relationship and don't get caught up on that dynamic.
01:07:22
Speaker
Right? Right. Because anybody's going to love that situation. That's why we have to have things in place to prevent it from happening. yeah It's, yeah, this, ah this was,
01:07:36
Speaker
kind of a terrible topic in in some ways but like but it needs to be addressed though right it does and i i can't even tell you how many times it like the craziest stuff comes up not even when it has to do with like police officers having like you know criminal offenses but like just people not understanding the dynamic of interactions in relationships and stuff right yeah And it's like, yeah, so get a clue because, you know, that child didn't decide to have a baby with you.
01:08:12
Speaker
you sexually assaulted her. Yeah. It's child sex abuse. And, you know, it can be, i can see in a lot of ways where that could be like stunning because they're a law enforcement officer who puts criminals away, except now you are the criminal. Yeah. Yeah.
01:08:32
Speaker
Yeah, that is it's got to be a wild change of pace for them to suddenly realize they're the bad guy. It's one of the hardest things, i think, to ah make a distinction. I don't think any sort of law enforcement officer says, like, hold my beer, watch this, and then does something like this without somehow fooling themselves into thinking, like, that's not what they're doing.
01:08:58
Speaker
Right. And so... I usually ask you at end the episode, do you have anything else? But the truth is I have so much more on this that I've already planned like multiple future episodes that I'll try to always label as some related to dirty badges. Cause I don't think you can get much dirtier than this.
01:09:19
Speaker
No, it's, um and I'm not sure. it does seem like as soon as it was like, as soon as they were made aware, most of these cases, it seems like action was like immediately taken.
01:09:31
Speaker
it's unfortunate that there wasn't stuff in place to have it not happen. Right. Right. There's, but there's less of a gray area though. Cause these are like, I think the DNA of a like child that you're having is pretty concrete evidence for people out there. wondering Well, right. And then like, I'm, I'm surprised at and the continued contact and stuff.
01:09:57
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. He needs help besides just being in prison, I think. There are gray areas in some of the cases that I want to cover along the way, but a lot of them, they are in desperate need of a lot of psychological help.
01:10:12
Speaker
Right, and I have a feeling, like, even just explaining the situation, I mean, the the child ah that he impregnated the child with being raised by the grandmother in the North Carolina case,
01:10:26
Speaker
The grandmother is actually suffering from abusive behavior from the man at this point. Does that make sense? Yeah. yes So how many victims does he get to have, right?
01:10:39
Speaker
Before they go, he needs help and like it's dealt with. And I just, i think that it's above a lot of the the parameters of what they can really deal with in the justice system, right? Yeah. Yeah.
01:10:55
Speaker
Because it's just so out there. Well, that's how the mom feels, too. Her comment, I think this is an excellent way to close out the episode. She says in her statement to the Gaston Gazette, it makes me want to kill him.
01:11:08
Speaker
Whatever with jail, jail doesn't mean anything. This man is still doing it. Apparently, he's getting by with everything. Right. and That comes from being a cop.
01:11:22
Speaker
it It does. and it's And I promise you, like there's a something got flipped there because I don't know for certain he's doing things thinking I'm getting by with everything. He's like, this is just the way I am, right? And so that has to be adjusted, and that's where that extra help comes into play.
01:11:40
Speaker
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01:11:52
Speaker
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01:12:05
Speaker
I break things like guitars. Thick skin, no scars.
01:12:16
Speaker
We're in trouble, we took it too far
01:12:23
Speaker
I don't want to go but it's cause I'll disappoint ya It's all I've ever dreamed of, something I cannot let go of I hate the competition, this culture's like a Jimin I lost the motivation to get
01:12:46
Speaker
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01:13:04
Speaker
Thank you for joining us.