Sunday, September 27, 2009

The Jack-Booted Thug(s) of the Week...

... are Venice, Florida Police Chief Julie Williams, Police Lt. Mike Rose and City Attorney Bob Anderson, among others, if this article is at all accurate.

The devastating piece recounts that Venice Officer Mike Frassetti (fairly new to the department, but a previous 5-year veteran of the NYPD), responding to a radio call for assistance made by Chief Williams herself, stopped a Camaro that Williams had observed driving recklessly. Frassetti subsequently arrested the driver, Joshua Rose, for DUI and carrying a concealed weapon (brass knuckles).

Yes, you guessed it from the names given above. Josh Rose was apparently "connected", in that his cousin just happens to be Lt. Mike Rose, Frassetti's direct supervisor at the department.

Read the rest of the article for the dirty details of how this gang of thugs is currently trying to have Frassetti thrown off the force for doing his job in a professional manner allegedly destroying a routine incident report from a domestic violence call (that resulted in no arrests, and none were expected to be made) that took place two full months before he arrested Rose, even though:

  1. Frassetti vehemently claims he filed the report in question at the time of the incident;
  2. Frassetti is apparently the only officer ever to be investigated by the VPD for this sort of alleged record keeping lapse;
  3. Internal Affairs didn't notify Frassetti that he was being investigated until two months after the domestic violence call, one month after the IA case supposedly was put into motion and one week after he arrested Rose, all dates being in complete violation of department guidelines that "when an officer is undergoing an internal affairs investigation, he is supposed to be notified immediately";
  4. Other officers have in the past reported similar instances of reports being deleted and information from other cases being substituted in reports, both randomly done by a poorly functioning computer records system;
  5. The department's own IT guy testified that since password security was so bad citywide (computer users merely were told to use their name and badge number) anyone could have logged in and erased the report, and that records showed that Frassetti himself was nowhere near a department computer at the time he supposedly wiped the records.
The person who lodged the IA complaint and who initially interviewed Frassetti about his records? Good ol' Cousin Lt. Mike Rose, of course, he who had absolutely no ax whatsoever to grind with his officer.

These are the "professionals" that are charged with protecting and serving the public down there?

There's apparently a Part 2 to this sordid story coming. We'll have to check back in to see how much worse this bunch of clowns down in Florida can make themselves look by attempting to fire a good cop who did nothing wrong except lock up the "wrong" drunk - one who apparently had that "blue wall of silence" placed around him by familial extension.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

OK, now that was funny.
-- John Patten,
-- Venice Florida! dot com