"Top cop" my rear end

Prosecutors in Cook County, Illinois have dropped DUI charges against motorist Raymond Bell, even though arresting officer Joe D. Parker stated in the arrest report that

"Bell 'staggered' and that his gait was 'unsteady' exiting the car", and Parker additionally

"marked Bell down for lowering his foot and also for hopping, using his arms for balance and swaying."

So why did the D.A.'s office dismiss the case? Well, mainly because the dash-cam video footage from Parker's own squad car clearly shows that nothing remotely like what was described above ever happened during the traffic stop. Bell doesn't stagger, stumble, wobble, lean, or do anything other than exit the car in a quite normal fashion, and he easily passes all of the cerebellar function tests. (The video is on the story's web page, so you can see what Parker laughingly calls "failure" for yourself.)

In other words, Officer Parker, recently honored as a "top cop" (try not to giggle) by a local group named the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists for his incredibly large amount of arrests for driving impaired, was lying through his official teeth, and if it weren't for the video, Mr. Bell would probably have been wrongly convicted.

What's worse, the Chicago Police Department is being accused by Bell's lawyer of covering up his wrongful arrest:

"Bell's criminal defense attorney, Gregory Reeder, said he subpoenaed the Chicago Police Department for all records -- including videos -- but was provided only with Parker's arrest report. Later, the Cook County state's attorney's office independently mailed Reeder the video on Dec. 1, he said."

An innocent oversight, I'm sure.

Parker seems to be following in the footsteps of his colleague, another busy little "DUI" nabber:

"Prosecutors have charged one of those cops -- Officer John Haleas -- with trumping up a DUI case. A review of his DUI arrests led to 156 cases being dismissed, Daly said." (Emphasis mine)

Haleas had also been named a "top cop" by the anti-DUI group. How embarrassing for them.

We've got over 150 completely innocent citizens whose rights were utterly violated by Haleas when they were wrongly stopped, searched and jailed by him, and Lord only knows how many more of Parker's busts are going to be added to that total, along with the arrests of yet a third cop whose performance is also under review. How many pathological liars do they have on that department, anyway?

Oh, and just to put a little hypocritical icing on the putrid cake that is this story, Officer Parker himself is a former DUI arrestee:

"Records show that Parker himself was once arrested for DUI, charged with drunken driving on Feb. 17, 1996. That case was dismissed the following year."

Of course it was. I would expect nothing less.

"Special people" in Chicago apparently not only don't get busted when they haven't been drinking (unlike all of those wrongly arrested people), they also don't get busted when they have been drinking and driving.