Corrupt Cops, Big Surprise

A report from Miami Beach -

Miami Beach Police Officer Manuel Chorens...has secrets. For one, he's rich. In 2008, he pulled in $175,651.84.

Also, he's a crook.

In August 2008 at the Lincoln Road CVS — a drugstore blocks from the beach where hordes of tourists buy flip-flops and sunscreen — managers noticed goods disappearing from the shelves. They began watching the 14-year veteran cop. Soon they saw Chorens, who had been paid tens of thousands of dollars to protect their store, filling plastic CVS bags and stashing them in the security room in back. More than $5,000 worth of stuff went missing.

A CVS investigator decided to dig a little deeper. He noted the time each night Chorens showed up for his shift and when he clocked out. The hours didn't add up.

So someone from the store called internal affairs investigators, who poked around some more.

Sure enough, they found Chorens was blatantly cheating CVS. Night after night, he'd arrive around 8 p.m. and stay until 10 or 11. Sometimes he didn't even show up. On his pay sheets, though, he claimed six or seven hours at the drugstore.

Pretty cut and dry, right? Wrong...

Though internal investigators found video footage of Chorens stuffing bags and taking them home, they exonerated him of theft charges.

Just one guy right?

A Miami New Times investigation has found that 200 officers — 54 percent of the 367 nonexecutive cops — made six figures last year. One of them raked in almost $214,000, more than the chief or the Beach's mayor. A sergeant earned just under $230,000 a few years ago; that's about equal to Vice President Joe Biden's annual salary. It gets worse. The Beach force, which patrols an idyllic strip of sand relatively free of blight and gang violence, is not only the best paid in the region but also among the most troubled.

The article then goes on to cite cases of sleeping on the job, harassment, domestic violence, drug use, kidnapping, torture and murder. And where is the mayor?

"I certainly didn't realize our police officers were making so much money," Miami Beach Mayor Matti Herrera Bower says.

Asleep on the job as well.

The Real Effect
This is why America is angry. There is a definite divide between the public and private sector and a further divide within the public sector favoring those who "play ball" with the public sector "authorities". This has created a tiered system with more and more "public policy" which is little more than a system to empower those who would assure us they are our leaders.

The law is supposed to be blind. But all too often your connections will not only reduce your sentence, it will allow for flagrant and rampant evil.

And now they want more taxes, more control and assuredly more evil? At some point, the oppressed say no more. To quote -

One of the great myths is that Americans are free people and once upon a time they were but they've not been free since 1913. Because once you have an income tax you no longer own your own labor and the historic definition of a free person is a person who owns his own labor. If you don't own your own labor, you are a serf or a slave. ~ Paul Craig Roberts