Brickbat: Sign on the Dotted Line

Jeremy Haney, a former police officer in Appleton, Wisconsin, has pleaded no contest to felony misconduct in public office for falsifying information in a report. Haney forged the signatures of a prosecutor and a judge on paperwork to authorize placing a tracking device on a suspect's vehicle as part of a drug investigation. An assistant district attorney spotted the discrepancy when he was reviewing the documents and realized they were not the ones he signed. Haney claimed that he lost the original paperwork, so he reprinted it and forged the signatures. He will receive no jail time but will have to pay fines and fees totaling more than $1,000.

Comments

[Chumby]

Part of the punishment should include all future vehicles of his be required to have tracking devices that send data to the DA’s office.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

No. To the people he put tracking devices on.

[Fist of Etiquette]

THAT RUBBER STAMP WAS ABOVE HIS PAY GRADE.

[mad.casual]

I hate to get all autistic-y about this but was the tracking device removed because the Judge and the Prosecutor wouldn't have signed the paperwork or is this Reason reporting a case of an officer getting fined $1000 for what, in other places, might get a desk pogue a pat on the back for cutting red tape?

Because, again as someone who hates to get all autistic-y about things, I've more than once been chewed out and, separately, praised for raising issues about signatures on backup copies of paperwork.

[MatthewSlyfield]

"Jeremy Haney, a former police officer in Appleton, Wisconsin"

Looks like he might have lost his job over this as well as the fine.

[mad.casual]

But, again, and to kinda expound on the point, is the tracker still on the car or is this a case where Haney’s serving as a/the fall guy or was he trying to put a tracker on someone’s car in order to find out where all the bodies are buried?

Once again, there are “6 Officers In Big Name City Got Off Scott Free After Beating A Man To Death On Camera.” and then there’s “Clerical Error In Appleton Wisconsin That Results In Fine, Felony Charges (And Maybe Termination) Is Ongoing Evidence of Police Behaving Badly.”

Remember how the FBI had high definition footage from the drone flying over Kenosha that captured Kyle Rittenhouse defending himself that just sort of… disappeared… between the time the prosecution found out and they had to turn it over to the defense… and nothing else happened?

Is felony misconduct for forged signatures in Appleton, WI what our police state has actually been reduced to?

[MatthewSlyfield]

"But, again, and to kinda expound on the point, is the tracker still on the car"

Physically, I doubt that it matters at this point.

It's one thing to slap a battery operated transponder attached to a magnet onto the undercarriage of a car, but it's something very different to have enough access and time to hard wire it into the car's electrical system.

With the former, even if it's still physically attached to the car, it's much more likely than not that the battery is dead at this point. And the latter is exceedingly unlikely in the first place.