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THE NARCOTICS officers knew they were being watched on video surveillance moments after they entered the bodega.
Officer Jeffrey Cujdik told store owner Jose Duran that police were in search of tiny ziplock bags often used to package drugs. But, during the September 2007 raid, Cujdik and fellow squad members seemed much more interested in finding every video camera in the West Oak Lane store.
“I got like seven or eight eyes,” shouted Officer Thomas Tolstoy, referring to the cameras, as the officers glanced up. “There’s one outside. There is one, two, three, four in the aisles, and there’s one right here somewhere.” For the next several minutes, Tolstoy and other Narcotics Field Unit officers systematically cut wires to cameras until those “eyes” could no longer see. Then, after the officers arrested Duran and took him to jail, nearly $10,000 in cash and cartons of Marlboros and Newports were missing from the locked, unattended store, Duran alleges. The officers guzzled sodas and scarfed down fresh turkey hoagies, Little Debbie fudge brownies and Cheez-Its, he said.
What the officers didn’t count on was that Duran’s high-tech video system had a hidden backup hard-drive. The backup downloaded the footage to his private Web site before the wires were cut. Although Duran has no video of the alleged looting, he has a 10-minute video that shows the officers using a bread knife, pliers, milk crates and their hands to disable the surveillance system. Duran’s video bolsters allegations by eight other Philadelphia store owners who said that Cujdik and other officers destroyed or cut wires to surveillance cameras. Those store owners also said that after the wires were cut, cigarettes, batteries, cell phones, food and drinks were taken. The Daily News reported the allegations March 20. The officers also confiscated cash from the stores – a routine practice in drug raids – but didn’t record the full amount on police property receipts, the shop owners allege.
Six more store owners or workers, including Duran, contacted the Daily News after the March 20 article. All six described similar ordeals involving destroyed cameras and missing money and merchandise.
Cops with SDIQs (“Single Digit IQs”, pronounced EsDicks).
Nice to know one is being Protected and Served. I’m sure they will all lose their jobs, correct?
These pigs took and oath.
http://oath-keepers.blogspot.com/
They think they are gods and have been trained terrorize the public. Look at this footage of the country being looted.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw
And what would it take to setup a DUMMY system, and have a hidden camera..?
YOU KNOW, these guys are going to straighten up for awhile, THEN go back to doing the SAME THING.
Its sad that I’m no longer surprised when I see any stories about this kind of thing.
No prizes for guessing why this behavior is so widespread, you tell these pigs that they have power over everyone so often that they start to believe it, and eventually misuse it. Well when you have people applying to be a cop get overlooked, this is the end result.
ALL of the cops involved with any of this sort of thing (even the ones who didn’t participate but knew, then kept quiet about it) should lose their jobs and serve time behind bars. Every single fucking one of them.
They justify it in their own minds because they have convinced themselves that their victim is a criminal, and the loot was a result of criminal activity. So no harm, after all they are just taking stuff from low life drug dealers.
So selling Ziploc™ bags qualifies one as a drug dealer, subject to punitive confiscation by any random law enforcement officer? What about toilet paper or paper towels? (You can make a pipe out of the cardboard tube.) What about lighters and matches? What about food that other drug dealers can eat to give them energy to buy and sell drugs?
This is beyond ridiculous.
Their bosses may not like it but if the community cares this is enough to cost them their jobs at the least.
They should do time.
When criminals rob you it sucks but hey they are criminals, but when the people that YOU PAY to protect you are the ones doing it to you then they should get double time. Here a police chief and his assistant chief just got time for raping a country club bartender on the premises while they were “on the job”.
I hope these Philly guys get what they deserve and are made an example to the whole country of what happens when the enforcers start doing what they are hired to stop. A law giving them more time for serious crimes would be supported by me. With power comes responsibility, kind of makes you wonder if the TV/movie notion of IA being the scumbags needs to be rethought.
sounds like SOP for the bad apples in every industry.
my g/f and i had to fight false drug charges
several months ago after being arrested
and charged with drug possession after pulling up
to a Duane Reade to get cash for from an ATM for gas.
it took several appearances in court before
the charged were dropped. the cops never
showed up in court. -but not before the DA offered her to cop a plea for intent to sell
(misdemeanor & 6mo probation)
one of the cops obviously was not happy about situation and very cool, the other however was a
complete arse and wholeheartedly at ease with what he was doing.
-completely trumped up charges. -had i not been there as a witness (and no criminal record) they may have gotten away with it.
in the holding cell their were about a dozen
out about 30 that were caught in a sweep.
-all on false charges.
they didnt even impound the car..the cop
drove it back to the station with me in
it and parked it in the station lot.
-released it back to my g/f when she
was released about 5 hours later.
apparently, if they bring in a vanload at
the end of a shift, stuck doing paperwork
etc, they get OT and the next day off,
payed. -makes no difference whether the
the arrests are valid.
unfortunately, its the way things are. if
your innocent and have priors and no witness,
-chances are you’ll have to cop to a plea
of some sort. it’s your word against theirs.
-s
#4 & 5, Zy & Ron,
How correct both of you are. Zy, I share your anger. Ron, as usual, a great analysis.
Questions about the cops aside: A corner bodega has on hand $10,000 in cash? Does make me a bit suspicious.
A place that sells cigs and liquor, if you went at the right time should have 10K in receipts.
Also, I think they were likely finding ‘dime bag’ style zip top bags – the one by 2 inch type. Not exactly something you put left overs in.
It is like the stores that were busted making ‘crack packs’ that had a lighter, steel wool, and a throw away paper flower in a glass pipe. Those were only being used by crack heads.
That being said – I think abuse of authority should be a serious crime, maybe not death penalty serious…but 20 to life in jail after having all your assets seized serious.
Why dd the cop take out the video cameras if they had nothing to hide?
how many times do I have to say it, never trust a cop.
this should have been released on live leak like two years ago, sans the blurred faces. Everyone in PHI should know those faces.
I wonder if the store owner could be charged with a crime for doing that.
A covert system that streams to an offsite location that which concurrently with the visible cameras\DVR setup would have yielded awsome pig party video.
What a bummer.
so he spent 15Gs on a security system, and since he’s a tech guy he probably installed it himself… that does not add up, even at two years ago pricing.
Hey, I think I saw Vic Mackey behind the Twinkies in the far corner. I knew he had to be in there somewhere.
I’m going to pretend I’m a Repulican and say it’s Obama’s fault.
#20… It’s Philly, so let’s split the difference and correctly call it the Democrats’ fault?
Sociopaths in uniform.
Cursor_
Philly has long been plagued with corrupt law enforcement. Every few years they get caught and straighten up for a while. Then they get lax and revert to their old ways.
Shouldn’t the FBI fix this?
Cops are pure scum.
Being from Philly myself, I can tell you I hear these kinds of stories all the time. Friends tell me of cop parties where copious amounts of drugs are being used used clearly taken from “evidence.” That being said this is a rough town to be a cop in, 3 killed in the last 6 months. On one hand I have a lot of respect for the job and I have met my fair share of awesome, down to earth cops. But clearly like anything else there has to be more stringent oversight to thwart these kinds of shenanigans. And that can only be blamed on the commish.