Doris Daudy, a woman of approximately 38 years old, was walking north on Maroa toward her home just north of the Tower District.  Her purse was slung over one shoulder, her arms wrapped around grocery bags.  She never minded the walk; it was just a few blocks.  And although there was an occasional purse-snatching in the area, she’d walked this route for years without problems and felt perfectly safe.

Sam cut across the lawn at the end of the block, hoping to save himself a few seconds, and accidentally ran smack into Doris, knocking her to the ground.  Her groceries flew out of the bag, which miraculously was not ripped, and her purse spilled open.

Sam immediately began apologizing.  “I’m so sorry, ma’am!  I’m so very sorry!,” he said as he helped Doris to her feet.  “It’s just that I’m late for work and if I don’t get there on time my boss is going to fire me for sure!”

Doris knew the gut-wrenching feeling that went with not being able to make the bills because she or her husband were temporarily unemployed.  And she wasn’t really hurt.  She assured Sam that everything was fine as she started to collect her groceries and put them back into the back.  For his part, Sam was scrambling to help pick up her things, frantically stuffing spilled items back into her purse and worrying about how much later he was going to be now.  But he couldn’t run off without making sure she was okay.

Sam handed Doris her purse, continuing to apologize and brushing some leaves off Doris’s shoulder.

“Go on,” Doris said.  “I’m fine.  Really.  You don’t want to lose your job.”

Until a while after Doris got home, neither Sam nor Doris realized that when her purse spilled open, her wallet fell into the storm drain.

When Doris realized her wallet was missing, she didn’t really believe Sam had taken it.  She didn’t know Sam, but he had seemed so apologetic and nice.  But her husband insisted that she call the police.

“What else could have happened to it?,” he asked.

                                        * * * * *

Officer Steve “Stumper” Stevens was familiar with many people in the Tower District.  After getting Doris’s story and a description, he immediately knew who Sam was and went to his workplace to question him about “the assault on Doris and the theft of her wallet.”  Of course, he didn’t actually use these words with Sam.  Officer Stevens was smarter than that.

Officer Stevens asked Sam if he knew Doris.  Sam and Doris had not exchanged names and Sam didn’t know her, so he immediately confirmed Officer Stevens’ suspicions when he denied knowing Doris.

“Do you recall knocking a woman down earlier near Maroa and Floradora?,” Stevens asked.

“Oh.  Oh, uhm, that.”  Sam was caught off-guard.  Why would a police officer come to talk to him about accidentally knocking someone down?  The woman had assured him she was alright.  He made sure of it before he left her!  “Yes,” Sam said.

“And did you have her purse?,” Stevens asked.

“Well, uh, yes.  I helped pick everything up and gave it back to her.”

“What happened to the wallet?” Stevens asked.

“The wallet?”

“Yes, the wallet.  Did you give her back her wallet?”

“Uh…I…well…I must have.  I just picked everything up, put it in the purse and gave it back to her.  I was trying to help!”  Sam was nervous.  Officer Stevens wasn’t just asking questions.  It sounded like the officer didn’t believe him.  He seemed to think Sam had stolen the lady’s wallet.  For his part, Sam was stumped.  He knew he didn’t steal anything.  So when Officer Stevens told him he had the right to remain silent, the right to have an attorney and — as he would later tell his Public Defender — “whatever else he said,” all he could think is that he wanted to do whatever it took to convince the officer he had not done anything.

After “mirandizing” Sam, Officer Stevens ran through the questions again.  Sam gave the same story as before.  Officer Stevens told Sam he was arresting him for robbery.

“Robbery!”  Sam’s head was spinning.  “But I didn’t do anything!  I swear I didn’t take that lady’s wallet!”

                                        * * * * *

Sam’s public defender, Shirley Singer, sat across from Sam at the Juvenile Justice Campus where he was being held.  At the perfunctory detention hearing three days earlier, the District Attorney had argued that Sam was “a danger to the community” because he had “viciously” knocked “a helpless middle-aged woman, her arms full of groceries,” to the ground before stealing her wallet.  The judge agreed this behavior was egregious.  As far as the judge was concerned, Sam was “a danger to himself or to the community” and he was ordered detained.  A trial confirmation date was set.  Shirley was here to discuss “the facts of the case,” including the police report.

As Shirley read the report, she noted that, at least according to Officer Stevens, Sam had “admitted” to knocking “the victim” to the ground and taking her purse.  Sam had also “admitted” that he did not return the wallet.

“That’s not what I said!”  Sam was upset.  Shirley didn’t know whether to believe him or not.  She knew, however, that it actually did not matter.  Ultimately, if this was what the police report said, Shirley knew this was likely to be the testimony of the officer.  Sam’s denial of an admission was going to look self-serving.

Shirley knew that the judge was likely to accept the word of the police officer over that of Sam, the only other witness to the conversation.

After all, why would the officer lie?  Sam’s denial of the admission was self-serving.  But there was no way the officer’s assertion that Sam had admitted this crime to him was.

But, hey, this is just a story, right?  Things like this don’t really happen.  So go ahead, talk to the police.  Help yourself to a conviction.

Or you can watch this video of a police officer explaining why there’s nothing you can do to help yourself, once a police officer starts to question you.

So far that doesn’t seem to be a problem for the majority of submitizens, even though newspapers as small as the Fresno Bee contain at least one — and usually more than one — story almost every day about the illegal activities of police officers.

But there’s one type of malfeasance in which police officers engage even more routinely that usually goes unreported.  Until now.

The Wall Street Journal reports that,

According to a 1992 survey, prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges in Chicago said they thought that, on average, perjury by police occurs 20% of the time in which defendants claim evidence was illegally seized. (Amir Efrati, “Legal System Struggles With How to React When Police Officers Lie” (January 29, 2009) Wall Street Journal.)

And, trust me (I’m not a police officer), Chicago is not unique.

Patrick, over at PopeHat, reports in “A Rickety, Wooden Story” about two police officers who wanted in to a man’s house because they believed another man they wished to arrest was there.  They had no legal right to enter the house and the man refused them entry.  Thereupon, they beat him, tasered him and arrested him for assaulting police officers.  Fortunately, these cops were stupid and both wrote reports and repeatedly testified about the “rickety, wooden porch” which required one cop to stick his foot inside the door to stabilize himself, supposedly provoking the man’s attack.  Unfortunately (for the cops), the porch was made of concrete.  The only thing rickety was their fabricated story.

Not all police officers lies are as blatant as this, of course.  In San Francisco, a woman spent 20 months in jail, awaiting trial on attempted murder.  Though there was no evidence that a crime had even been committed, a police officer revised an earlier story about hearing a shot and seeing a car; months after the fact, he identified an innocent woman as the shooter.  A jury acquitted the woman after police, who had safeguarded the bullet in an evidence locker for two years, “disposed” of it three days into the trial.  The Public Defender was glad that the jury had seen through the lies.  But did they see through the lies?  Or did they merely think the officer was mistaken?  That case had so many weaknesses it’s hard to tell.

And then, of course, there are the “testiliars” who get away with it.  Shockingly, this is not really a secret.

“It is an open secret long shared by prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges that perjury is widespread among law enforcement officers,” though it’s difficult to detect in specific cases, said Alex Kozinski, a federal appeals-court judge, in the 1990s. That’s because the exclusionary rule “sets up a great incentive for…police to lie.” (Amir Efrati, “Legal System Struggles With How to React When Police Officers Lie” (January 29, 2009) Wall Street Journal (emphasis added).)

I still remember when I first learned about this.  I was stunned.  Prior to becoming a criminal defense attorney, I thought that most police officers were good and figured, at most, ten percent were “bad cops.”  As a criminal defense attorney practicing in Fresno, Tulare, Madera and Kings Counties, I’ve come to learn that, at best, the percentages are reversed when it comes to testilying.  As the WSJ article points out, “there’s a tacit agreement among many officers that lying about how evidence is seized keeps criminals off the street.”  Police officers figure it’s okay to break the law in order to get a conviction against someone who they believe has broken the law.  After all, the someone being convicted isn’t them.

The problem is that sometimes police officers are wrong.

It leaves you to wonder: “How many innocent people are sitting in jails and prisons because of police testiliars?”