Ohio Couple Spent 20 hours in Jail for a Crime They did not Commit

[upstatecajun]

LAKEWOOD, Ohio -- Charles Geiger might owe his freedom to a few moments of grainy footage, captured by video surveillance cameras mounted in the most providential of locations.

Footage from a Lakewood restaurant proved the prominent businessman and former school board member was enjoying dinner with his daughter about the time Cleveland police say he and his SUV struck an off-duty police sergeant directing traffic outside a downtown Cleveland parking garage.

And another video from the garage itself is said to have caught the altercation and shows obvious differences between the Geiger vehicle and the true suspect's SUV

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/04/still_no_apology_for_lakewood.html







http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Liberal-Ohioan/195130570504421

[Hassin Bin Sober]

1. Bravo, pigs! Bravo!

It was a nice touch arresting the wife for trying to explain her and her husband's whereabouts.

Obstruction of justice. Bravo!

Bravo for adding insult to injury: The "off duty" pig and his false eyewitness identification is no longer the problem of the department because, you see, he was moonlighting when he was struck. Convenient that. Never mind that regular "civilians" wouldn't be able to bring down the resources of not one but TWO departments to exact immediate revenge, er I mean "justice" for crimes committed against serfs.

[Zax2me]

3. Bravo pigs?

What terms do you use to describe other groups - racial.....or, Muslims?
Most who want to judge and/or describe people, if needed at all, do so on personal merits rather than taking examples and painting the entire 'group' in a negative or perhaps positive light.
Opening yourself up like this you get to meet amazing people. Some, of which, are police officers - that you refer to as pigs.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

4. Forgive me if I have no desire to meet the PIGS that arrested the man's wife ...

.... because she had the NERVE to explain he husband's whereabouts.

How does that work again?

Cop: where was your husband tonight?

Wife: He was at a restaurant and not driving the car in question.

Cop: You didn't tell us what we wanted to hear so now we arrest YOU.

"Obstruction of justice" is a charge that might have been applicable AFTER verifiable unimpeachable evidence was brought in to a court of law and AFTER the husband was CONVICTED.

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. "Police quietly dropped the case on March 18." n/t

[HughBeaumont]

5. The lack of apology - a simple act of humility - is what cheeses me off about it all.

Like the authoritarian boss or Republican who refuses to admit error. You fucked up, OWN up. All this does is undeservedly give all police a bad name.

[RebelOne]

6. I can only hope they sue for false imprisonment.

They should obtain the best attorney money could buy because they have a valid case.

[sarcasmo]

7. Quick arrest because the hit and run involved a cop, typical bullshit.

[ChoppinBroccoli]

8. The Part About The Wife Sounds Vaguely Familiar

I once had a client who was charged with a misdemeanor, and in addition to that charge, the Prosecutor decided to tack on a charge of Falsification (a fancy word for "lying to the cops"). When I asked her what her justification for charging him Falsification was, she said that his "lying to the cops" offense was............get this............when the police showed up to talk to him about the underlying misdemeanor offense, he said he didn't do it.

So, according to this Prosecutor on this day, telling the cops you didn't do it amounts to a completely SEPARATE crime of Falsification. When I calmly explained to the Prosecutor that at the time of the interrogation, my client was still Constitutionally presumed to be innocent, since in this country we are theoretically innocent until PROVEN guilty in a Court of Law, and then asked why she so blatantly subverted the Constitution, she replied to me, "I don't know. I think I must have been having a bad day that day." Well, I'm certainly glad that her being in a bad mood potentially set a precedent whereby if a person charged with a crime enters a Not Guilty plea in Court and/or stands on his/her Constitutionally-guaranteed protection of presumed innocence, he/she is guilty of an entirely separate crime. Great.

To her credit, she dismissed the Falsification charge voluntarily, but just the fact that she filed it to begin with (and the long-reaching implications her bad mood could have had) made me shudder. But that's what happens when you live in a society in which Constitutional protections are sneered at and cops and prosecutors are universally celebrated as "the good guys."

[Modern_Matthew]

9. Any mistaken imprisonment should be meat with heavy consequences...

No exceptions.