Ted
The pilot formerly known as Twin Engine Ted
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2007
- Messages
- 30,006
- Display Name
Display name:
iFlyNothing
As a detective, I laugh at the idea of planted evidence...for what purpose? To frame someone because...???
The public seems to think there is this "pressure" to solve cases. Pressure from bosses, the public, politicians...nope, there's no pressure, other than the personal investment I put into some cases.
I mean, I'm proud to say I lead my department in cases assigned, cases solved, cases closed, and confessions per case. And even though I lead my department (and my department stats are higher than average for my county solve-rates), I'm only solving something like 30%+ of my cases assigned to me...the department average is like 27%, and the county average is like 25%...how much pressure could there be, when we're only solving less than a third of the crimes out there? (I'm guessing at these numbers, btw, as I haven't seen the stats in awhile...I just remember that I was few percent above my dept, which is a few percent above my county)
I once exonerated a guy who was accused of an assault. The guy was a several-time parolee, and a person nearly any officer would have categorized as a "dirt bag". He was accused of violently assaulting an old woman, by the old woman herself. Come to find out, she needed the parolee out of the picture over this bizarre love triangle. I look at my exoneration of that guy (and prosecution of his accuser) as one of the highlights of my career. When I've mentioned it to other detectives, they nearly UNIVERSALLY say that the idea of convicting the wrong person haunts them (as it does me).
So, unless you can show some kind of reason for personal bias, like the detective had a reason to frame a particular person for this or that, my personal bull **** meter goes off when I hear "planted evidence"...
I'm curious about the number of unsolved cases. You list solving about 30% of cases. How does that change when you get to violent crimes vs. various thefts?
My trailer got stolen in college. I had an idea of who stole it, but no evidence and they didn't have it visible if they had stolen it. Police never found it. Trailers are easy to steal and hard to identify, so that's not surprising.
I witnessed a friend of mine get hit by a drunk driver once. Got the license plate number, called 911. Cops refused to do anything and said the fact that I got the plate number wasn't evidence since the owner might not have been driving. To me that was complete BS and really hurt my opinion of cops, or at least of the NYPD (although anyone who knows the NYPD knows that they are NOT a good bunch).
My car also got broken into once, dashboard smashed, radio etc. stolen. Again, no real good way to find it.
My coworker was shot and killed last year, the person was caught quickly and sentenced. But there was overwhelming evidence and witnesses to the event, it would've been hard not to convict that one.
So I suppose you could say my personal record (of sorts) is 1/4, but should've been 2/4 if the NYPD had done their job. The break-in and trailer theft would've been really hard to solve legitimately since there were no security cameras to get any evidence.