| NEWS > 29 March 2007 |
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East Texas police chief gets 1
A longtime East Texas police chief convicted of stealing a gun for his wife and giving away a case of beer from evidence has been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Chester Kennedy, who served as Troup police chief for more than 12 years, was the target of a corruption probe in a department that prosecutors said commonly accepted money and drugs as bribes.
Kennedy, 60, was sentenced Monday after being found guilty in November of theft and tampering with physical evidence. He was convicted of taking a police pistol and letting an officer remove a 30-can case of beer from evi... Read more
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Irish Voice - New York City,NY
29 March 2007
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Garda Síochána
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Police to Undergo Reform
JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell said damning Supreme Court criticism of Garda (police) corruption in Donegal which resulted in a night club boss being “fitted up” and serving 27 months in jail for bogus drugs offences justifies his policy of introducing a major shake up of the force.
He said the treatment of Frank Shortt was so bad the government had no alternative but to pursue a program of radical reform.
McDowell’s comments followed a decision by the highest court in the land to increase a $2.52 million compensation award to a record $6.23 million.
The new sum includes an unprecedented $1.33 million punitive damages to mark the court’s abhorrence of the “outrageous conduct” by police towards Shortt. His lawyer Katherine Ward said the increase was beyond Shortt’s “wildest dreams.”
“Anyone who strongly supports the Garda Síochána as I and the vast majority of the people in this country do is entitled to feel a great sense of shock, disappointment and dismay at what happened to Frank Shortt,” McDowell said.
The minister said he was, however, “heartened” by the court’s acknowledgment that the behavior of two cops who were central to Shortt’s case “should not cast aside our respect for the dedication shown by the vast majority of members down through the years.”
Former Superintendent Kevin Lennon has since been dismissed from the force, while former detective Noel McMahon resigned.
The court, and other investigations into police corruption, heard the treatment of Shortt was part of a series of bent practices aimed at obtaining speedy promotion for Lennon.
In his judgment, the presiding Chief Justice John Murray described the scandal as “a stain of the darkest dye on the otherwise generally fine tradition of the Garda.” He criticized the “especially grave” abuse of Shortt by Lennon and McMahon.
The consequence for Shortt was “a tormenting saga of imprisonment, mental and physical deterioration, estrangement from family, loss of business, public and professional ignominy and despair.”
Mr. Justice Adrian Hardiman, who was also on the bench, said the state authorities had conceded only after “a long struggle” that Shortt was the victim of “the worst known oppression of a citizen by the state” but the Garda had yet to apologize to him.
What happened to Shortt was so outrageous as almost to defy description but the police force had yet to admit this.
Shortt, now aged 72 and a married father of five, was jailed for three years after being wrongly convicted of allowing the sale of drugs in his nightclub, the Point Inn, on Donegal’s Inishowen peninsula in 1992. He served 27 months of the sentence in Mountjoy Prison, was put on anti-depressants and lost more than 30 pounds.
When in prison he was refused periods of release for the birth of his grandchild and when his wife was ill in hospital.
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