Drug Raid Death Not Guilty

Same old same old: Cops bust down door. Drug dealer wakes up and thinks he's being attacked by criminals. Drug dealer shits his pants. Drug dealer fires off four rounds. Somebody innocent dies, this time a hard-working police officer.

A sergeant pointed out this story to me. He writes:

"Yea, it's Canada, but it's not too much a stretch to see this happening here. Bottom line: Everyone loses."

In the middle is the drug-dealing cop-killing malaka. (Photo by Dave Sidaway)

Officer Down

It's horrible anytime a police officer dies. It's particularly horrible when it's at the hands of another police officer.

If the Baltimore Sun is correct, the officer who died had 44 years on. I didn't know any officer had 44 years on.

My condolences to the officer's family.

Justice?

The Sun reports that a man was sentenced to 11 years for dealing crack. That's a lot of years for crack, I thought. Of course, like everything with crime and criminals in Baltimore, that's not the whole story.

This 28-year-old man, William Floyd Crudup, shot two city police officer in 2005. His trial ended in a mistrial because one juror, "refused to participate in the looking at the evidence and told the judge that she had made up her mind about the case at the start of the trail."

This is not the place to experiment with Jury Nullification.

Sometimes people are just ig-nent. This isn’t the first time a Baltimore City jury refused to convict a guilty man for shooting or killing a police officer. It’s why police officers don’t trust city juries. Baltimore is a place where it is all too common for one person in twelve to believe it is every man’s right to kill police officers. I remember the shock and disbelief I felt when the killer of Officer Kavon Gavin walked free (he too has since been imprisoned for something else). Other officers were not surprised.

Crudup was still behind bars. Three years later the retrial of Crudup was still in the works. But back in 2005, a few days after he was charged with shooting the police officers, police raided Crudup’s homes and found drugs and guns and ammo.

The Feds took the case and got Crudup to cop a plea (3 years later). So it’s not 11 years for crack dealing. It’s 11 years for shooting two police officers. It just happens that they got him for crack.

Justice is a game. Everybody involved in the system knows this. The good guys play to win, too.