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| NEWS > 17 February 2011 |
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Police in Puerto Rico rocked b
For years, police officers in this bleak coastal town seized drugs on raids — then allegedly planted it on dozens of people.
The FBI arrested 10 officers this summer in one of the worst police corruption cases to hit Puerto Rico.
The impact of the scandal became apparent this week when the local Justice Department recommended throwing out cases against 51 people accused of drug offenses in Mayaguez, a town on Puerto Rico's western shores.
The police unit in Mayaguez considered residents of housing projects near their precinct as "targets of opportunity," said L... Read more
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 Article sourced from
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Orlando Sentinel
17 February 2011
This article appeared in the above title/site.
To view it in its entirity click this link.
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Windermere Police Department, FL
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Windermere police: Every member of force must undergo new background check
Every member of the Windermere Police Department must undergo new background investigations in the wake of last month's corruption scandal surrounding former police chief Daniel Saylor.
Chief Mike McCoy, who took command last week, announced the order Thursday as a crucial step toward restoring public confidence in the agency.
"I told them to be very careful not to leave out or omit anything … The consequences will be severe," McCoy said, referring to officers' arrests, personal relationships and behavior that would reflect poorly on their integrity. "I made it very clear I want everything in there."
The move is aimed at avoiding a repeat of the troubling revelations that emerged about some officers hired by Saylor, who was fired last month after he was accused of shutting down a child-sex investigation into a friend. The new background checks will be done by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement or an independent body, not Windermere's own investigator.
"That's needed to add credibility to the process," McCoy said. "It's important we find someone from outside the department."
Windermere's current officers have 30 days to fill out the FDLE background check applications, which were handed out Wednesday afternoon. Each officer also must undergo a new instant fingerprint check.
Bad behavior in officers' past
Background checks conducted on Saylor's watch did not uncover a slew of past bad behavior — some of it criminal — by cops ultimately hired by Windermere. Last year, the Orlando Sentinel reported Windermere became known throughout Central Florida law enforcement as an agency willing to hire ex-cops others would not.
The Sentinel report in May revealed that since becoming chief in 2002, Saylor hired more than 20 "second-chance" officers who had resigned from other agencies while under investigation for drug abuse, domestic violence, lying and assault.
McCoy, a former Orlando police chief and head of Orange County Public Safety, was hired to rebuild the Windermere Police Department following Saylor's arrest on one count of giving unlawful compensation for official behavior and one count of official misconduct. His friend, Scott Frederick Bush, was jailed on child-sex charges that carry the potential of life in prison.
Windermere remains the focus of an FDLE corruption investigation.
Since the scandal broke on Jan. 12, Saylor's top aide, Lt. Paul Conway, resigned and agreed to testify as part of FDLE's corruption investigation. Another former member and a current member of the police department have been charged with crimes unrelated to the Saylor investigation.
More resignations are expected, according to current and former Windermere police officers. This week, FDLE is reviewing the department's personnel files to make sure they contain all required documentation.
Nearly half of the 24 members of the Windermere force in 2010 had been hired by Saylor after they resigned from other agencies while under investigation, according to police records and interviews over the last two years.
Officer Timothy Cash, for instance, received a glowing pre-employment evaluation.
"Based on his diverse background and law enforcement experience, the applicant would be an excellent addition to the Windermere Police Department," Saylor's longtime investigator, Lt. John C. Hein, wrote in 2007.
Hein's evaluation didn't mention that Cash resigned from the Orange County Sheriff's Office rather than be fired in 1998 — or that he was fired two years later by the Kissimmee Police Department for interfering with an investigation of a Seminole County adult club where his wife worked as an entertainer, records show.
Instead of documenting Cash's misbehavior, Hein wrote in his final report that the sheriff's office "provided records indicating that Cash had voluntarily resigned not involving misconduct." And Hein claimed Kissimmee let Cash go "due to department difficulty to allocate resources to the [police] reserve program."
Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings said Hein reviewed Cash's disciplinary file — which shows Cash resigned while facing termination for a drunken attack on his ex-girlfriend at Rachel's Lounge in south Orange County. A review board ruled he should be fired for domestic violence, poor moral character, breaking the law, excessive drinking off-duty, unbecoming conduct and unsatisfactory performance, records show.
"I don't condone bad cops remaining in the business," Demings said last week, citing several disgraced deputies hired by Saylor. "Most agencies wouldn't have hired those guys, but Windermere did."
Kissimmee police records state Cash was fired for "association with criminals" and "immoral, unlawful, indecent or improper conduct on or off the job."
Hein — one of Saylor's first hires after becoming police chief in 2002 — was arrested in 2000 and 2001 on domestic violence-related charges in Seminole County, which were later dropped. Neither of those incidents was included in his personnel file, which the Sentinel reviewed.
After Hein recommended hiring Cash, they worked off-duty together as personal bodyguards for Tiger Woods' family following the golfer's 2009 crash in Isleworth, a gated community near Windermere.
Saylor also permitted Cash and Hein to work off-duty as private investigators, which is prohibited by many other Florida police agencies because it poses a potential conflict of interest for employees with access to law-enforcement databases.
Cash resigned last year for undocumented reasons. Earlier this month, Cash was arrested in Seminole County on a charge of threatening to kill his wife after heavy drinking, arrest records show.
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