CovOps
Location : Ether-Sphere Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator Humor : Über Serious
| Subject: A drug informant lied, SWAT pounced, a man died Wed Dec 31, 2014 6:29 pm | |
| One of those he lied about, he said, was Jason Westcott, a young man with no criminal convictions whom a SWAT team killed during a drug raid that found just $2 worth of marijuana. Critics from across the country condemned the Police Department’s handling of the case as an example of the drug war’s lethal excesses. “They’re making statements that are lies, that are absolute untruths, that are based on shady facts,” Coogle said of Tampa police. “Everything they’re saying is based on the informant. And I was the informant.” Coogle said he decided to step forward, exposing his identity and risking retribution from drug dealers, because of his remorse over Westcott’s death. “I’ve got morals, and I feel compassion for this guy’s family and for his boyfriend,” he said. “It didn’t have to happen this way.” Coogle is nobody’s idea of a righteous whistle-blower. The only constant in his story is his own dishonesty; even when he confesses to lying you don’t know if he’s telling the truth. Much of what he says can be neither proved nor disproved, in large part because of the Police Department’s minimal supervision of his work. But Coogle’s allegations against the cops who paid him, and even his own admissions of double-dealing, aren’t necessarily what’s most disturbing about his account. Most unsettling of all might be what nobody disputes — that police officers were willing to trust somebody like him in the first place. When you’re trying to gauge the honesty of statements from a habitually dishonest person, it’s helpful to look at motives. Coogle had plenty of motive to lie to police about drug investigations. He got paid for his tips. I’m not sure what motive he’d have to lie here. What he told the paper will almost certainly end his gig as an informant, and, as the except points out, will likely put him in the crosshairs of the people he has reported to the police.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/12/31/a-drug-informant-lied-swat-pounced-a-man-died/ _________________ Anarcho-Capitalist, AnCaps Forum, Ancapolis, OZschwitz Contraband “The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.”-- Max Stirner "Remember: Evil exists because good men don't kill the government officials committing it." -- Kurt Hofmann |
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