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Video sharpens focus on raid | Philadelphia Daily News | 03/30/2009
Video sharpens focus on raid Philadelphia Daily News 03/30/2009
Video sharpens focus on raid
Store owner's hidden back-up shows cops snipping security-camera wires
By WENDY RUDERMAN & BARBARA LAKERPhiladelphia Daily News
rudermw@phillynews.com 215-854-2860
THE NARCOTICS officers knew they were being watched on video surveillance moments after they entered the bodega.
Officer Jeffrey Cujdik told store owner Jose Duran that police were in search of tiny ziplock bags often used to package drugs. But, during the September 2007 raid, Cujdik and fellow squad members seemed much more interested in finding every video camera in the West Oak Lane store.
"I got like seven or eight eyes," shouted Officer Thomas Tolstoy, referring to the cameras, as the officers glanced up. "There's one outside. There is one, two, three, four in the aisles, and there's one right here somewhere."
For the next several minutes, Tolstoy and other Narcotics Field Unit officers systematically cut wires to cameras until those "eyes" could no longer see.
Then, after the officers arrested Duran and took him to jail, nearly $10,000 in cash and cartons of Marlboros and Newports were missing from the locked, unattended store, Duran alleges. The officers guzzled sodas and scarfed down fresh turkey hoagies, Little Debbie fudge brownies and Cheez-Its, he said.
What the officers didn't count on was that Duran's high-tech video system had a hidden backup hard-drive. The backup downloaded the footage to his private Web site before the wires were cut.
Although Duran has no video of the alleged looting, he has a 10-minute video that shows the officers using a bread knife, pliers, milk crates and their hands to disable the surveillance system.
The officers didn't "touch the money with the system looking," said Duran, who came to the United States from the Dominican Republic 15 years ago and has no prior criminal record in Philadelphia.
They touched "the money after they destroy all the system," he said.
Duran, 28, of South Jersey, a technology buff, said that he was upset that the officers had wrecked his $15,000 surveillance system.
"That was his main complaint - that they destroyed his surveillance system," Duran's attorney, Sonte Anthony Reavis, said last week. "I believed him."
Duran's video bolsters allegations by eight other Philadelphia store owners who said that Cujdik and other officers destroyed or cut wires to surveillance cameras. Those store owners also said that after the wires were cut, cigarettes, batteries, cell phones, food and drinks were taken. The Daily News reported the allegations March 20.
The officers also confiscated cash from the stores - a routine practice in drug raids - but didn't record the full amount on police property receipts, the shop owners allege.
Six more store owners or workers, including Duran, contacted the Daily News after the March 20 article. All six described similar ordeals involving destroyed cameras and missing money and merchandise.
The officers arrested the stores' owners for selling tiny bags, which police consider drug paraphernalia. Under state law, it's illegal to sell containers if the store owner "knows or should reasonably know" that the buyer intends to use them to package drugs.
Duran alleged that the officers seized nearly $10,000 in the raid on his store, on 20th Street near 73rd Avenue. He said that the money included a week's worth of profits and cash to pay his three employees.
The property receipt filed by the officers said that they had confiscated only $785.
Told of the new allegations, George Bochetto, an attorney representing Cujdik, said that he stood by his earlier response:
"Now that the Daily News has created a mass hysteria concerning the Philadelphia Narcotics Unit, it comes as no surprise that every defendant ever arrested will now proclaim their innocence and bark about being mistreated.
"Suffice it to say, there is a not a scintilla of truth to such convenient protestations."
Page: 1 of 4 View All
1 2 3 4 Next»
BLOGNOTE:
As the police force is increasingly militarized bad cops become bolder and bolder.
Where do they get the nerve? What do they know? We are only seeing the ones who get caught. They are like cockroaches.... if you see one, there are a thousand hiding in the walls. And they are allowed to breed!!!
Update:
EDIT:
Did I say "cops"? Because that gives them too much credit.
These are roving bands of militarized, over-reaching, militarized PIGS!!!
Video sharpens focus on raid
Store owner's hidden back-up shows cops snipping security-camera wires
By WENDY RUDERMAN & BARBARA LAKERPhiladelphia Daily News
rudermw@phillynews.com 215-854-2860
THE NARCOTICS officers knew they were being watched on video surveillance moments after they entered the bodega.
Officer Jeffrey Cujdik told store owner Jose Duran that police were in search of tiny ziplock bags often used to package drugs. But, during the September 2007 raid, Cujdik and fellow squad members seemed much more interested in finding every video camera in the West Oak Lane store.
"I got like seven or eight eyes," shouted Officer Thomas Tolstoy, referring to the cameras, as the officers glanced up. "There's one outside. There is one, two, three, four in the aisles, and there's one right here somewhere."
For the next several minutes, Tolstoy and other Narcotics Field Unit officers systematically cut wires to cameras until those "eyes" could no longer see.
Then, after the officers arrested Duran and took him to jail, nearly $10,000 in cash and cartons of Marlboros and Newports were missing from the locked, unattended store, Duran alleges. The officers guzzled sodas and scarfed down fresh turkey hoagies, Little Debbie fudge brownies and Cheez-Its, he said.
What the officers didn't count on was that Duran's high-tech video system had a hidden backup hard-drive. The backup downloaded the footage to his private Web site before the wires were cut.
Although Duran has no video of the alleged looting, he has a 10-minute video that shows the officers using a bread knife, pliers, milk crates and their hands to disable the surveillance system.
The officers didn't "touch the money with the system looking," said Duran, who came to the United States from the Dominican Republic 15 years ago and has no prior criminal record in Philadelphia.
They touched "the money after they destroy all the system," he said.
Duran, 28, of South Jersey, a technology buff, said that he was upset that the officers had wrecked his $15,000 surveillance system.
"That was his main complaint - that they destroyed his surveillance system," Duran's attorney, Sonte Anthony Reavis, said last week. "I believed him."
Duran's video bolsters allegations by eight other Philadelphia store owners who said that Cujdik and other officers destroyed or cut wires to surveillance cameras. Those store owners also said that after the wires were cut, cigarettes, batteries, cell phones, food and drinks were taken. The Daily News reported the allegations March 20.
The officers also confiscated cash from the stores - a routine practice in drug raids - but didn't record the full amount on police property receipts, the shop owners allege.
Six more store owners or workers, including Duran, contacted the Daily News after the March 20 article. All six described similar ordeals involving destroyed cameras and missing money and merchandise.
The officers arrested the stores' owners for selling tiny bags, which police consider drug paraphernalia. Under state law, it's illegal to sell containers if the store owner "knows or should reasonably know" that the buyer intends to use them to package drugs.
Duran alleged that the officers seized nearly $10,000 in the raid on his store, on 20th Street near 73rd Avenue. He said that the money included a week's worth of profits and cash to pay his three employees.
The property receipt filed by the officers said that they had confiscated only $785.
Told of the new allegations, George Bochetto, an attorney representing Cujdik, said that he stood by his earlier response:
"Now that the Daily News has created a mass hysteria concerning the Philadelphia Narcotics Unit, it comes as no surprise that every defendant ever arrested will now proclaim their innocence and bark about being mistreated.
"Suffice it to say, there is a not a scintilla of truth to such convenient protestations."
Page: 1 of 4 View All
1 2 3 4 Next»
BLOGNOTE:
As the police force is increasingly militarized bad cops become bolder and bolder.
Where do they get the nerve? What do they know? We are only seeing the ones who get caught. They are like cockroaches.... if you see one, there are a thousand hiding in the walls. And they are allowed to breed!!!
Update:
EDIT:
Did I say "cops"? Because that gives them too much credit.
These are roving bands of militarized, over-reaching, militarized PIGS!!!
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