Sunday, June 23, 2013

What Gets a Bad Cop Punished? How About Intimidation, Abduction and Sexual Coercion?
...Over the next week, Steele arranges several meetings with Mom under the guise of discussing RM’s case. One such meeting is at Steele’s apartment and he tells Mom that he thinks he might be able to get RM out of detention because he can cut through all the damn red tape. And he wants to help out because he does not personally believe RM was involved. Then Steele changes the subject (or tries to anyway) to sex. Mom goes along with the overture because she believes Steele is the one who has the power to get her son’s release.

That's actually a bit delicate. The court says, "During one of Alicia’s visits to Steele’s apartment, Steele asked her to engage in sexual activity with him. Alicia testified that she complied with Steele’s requests because she believed that he had the power over R.M.’s release."

That's right, R.M. is cooling his heels in jail all this time, even though Steele, the arresting officer, suspects him of nothing other than, apparently, having a hot mom. From the Supreme Court of Ohio, again:

The prosecutor mistakenly assumed that R.M. had been sent home on the day of his arrest. When, on the ninth day, she discovered that R.M. was still in lock-up, she immediately had R.M. released and dismissed his charges....

...The facts underlying Steele’s charge for abduction wereinextricably intertwined with those underlying the charges for intimidation. He took R.M. out of school in handcuffs, placed him in an interrogation room, and blatantly intimidated him with dire threats directed at his entire family, including his school-aged siblings. ...

[T]here is nothing in the record to support the proposition that Steele had anything even approaching probable cause to arrest when he took this youngster out of school in handcuffs....