Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Ever-widening ripples.

As everyone knows, IMPD* Officer David "Tipsy" Bisard gained his notoriety by allegedly ringing the cherries with an 0.19% BAC after mowing down a few motorcycles with his cruiser.

The problem is, that notoriety is now having an effect on a lot of other things he had previously done as a police officer: For instance, Officer "Bottles" Bisard was the first responder at the notorious Hovey Street murders, and the defense attorney for the dirtbag accused of the slayings cannot believe the early Christmas present he's had dropped in his lap. To wit:
According to court documents, Bisard alone saw the bodies before they were moved by EMTs and photographed. The original positions of the bodies, the defense claims, is critical to the case and is evidence they need to dispute the anticipated testimony of one of the prosecution's star witnesses. A witness to the murders and how they occurred.

Un-frickin'-believable. "Blotto" Bisard's credibility as a witness is more or less completely destroyed, no matter what brave noises the prosecutor is making.


____________________________
*Which now stands for "I Must Patrol Drunk".

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's ALLEGED dirtbag.

Shootin' Buddy

staghounds said...

In this country, almost every criminal case rests upon the word of a single police officer.

I always tell police academy classes, never ever lie. Never ever ever.

And don't guess, either. If you didn't measure a distance, or don't remember a car make, or screwed something up, just say so!

Anonymous said...

As for me I decided long ago should I sit on a jurry no officers testimony will be given much credibility. same for DNA and finger prints.

skidmark said...

I trust everything any cop says in court to be 100% the absolute truth - if they can back it up with hard evidence. But that's the same standard I hold everybody else to. Otherwise it's just opinion.

stay safe.

Anonymous said...

"In this country, almost every criminal case rests upon the word of a single police officer."

Almost? O.K., almost.

Can you imagine the market for PCRs on Bisards old cases, espeically OWIs? I'd do one for half price just to see the prosecutor's reaction to my questions at the deposition.

PCRs aplenty. Talk about gun money!

Shootin' Buddy

Firehand said...

When I was a kid I once asked Dad about being in court. H talked about it a bit, and gave a couple of 'Do/Do Not' things to remember. The one he really emphasized was "Never, EVER lie under oath. To anyone, about anything, for any reason."

Looking back, I realize that it wasn't just the general principle, it was "If it's known you lied in the past, your word in court isn't worth squat in the future."

And doing things like this moron did feeds right into that.

Montie said...

This is one of the things I harp about with the officers that I supervise. Over the last 25 years, I have seen more than one officer become virtually radioactive to the court after some screw-up, be it on OR off-duty.

Right now Tulsa is having several officers investigated on several federal charges. This includes some guys that I thought were good officers, who have turned out to be scumbags of one form or another by their own admission.

Of course this means all their old cases, righteous or not, are now suspect, and people are being released right and left, including some who need to be in jail.

I always have maintained that if you can't get the badguy this time without fudging even a little, don't worry, they will always do something else down the road that you can get them on by doing it right. It's just not worth the trip to the dark side.

In Bisard's case, he should have gotten help or if any of his co-workers or supervisors even had a hint of him having a problem with alcohol they should have intervened. Now his screw-up is not only costing lives directly (the cyclists), but is hurting all the cases he has touched.

TimP said...

Yeah, I read a pseudo-fictional work (Rush by Kim Wozencraft; the star was based on Wozencraft herself) about this. Basically some narcotics cops had made a huge number of arrests, but couldn't get the evidence to arrest their big target so planted it. When this came out many of their other arrestees where also released.

Anonymous said...

"Ever Widening Nipples"

Seriously, that's what I thought the title was at first.