Another day, another disheartening and extremely disturbing story involving abuse of power by law enforcement. This latest head scratcher involves court records just being released about an officer from Ohio who was putting up ‘traffic stop sex’ listings on Craigslist, flirting relentlessly, and who was exchanging sexual favors at traffic stops for lenience, involving but not limited to sex acts being performed on him AND taking pictures of himself fondling breasticles at traffic stops. Sound like someone who should be tasked with protecting and serving ordinary citizens? Like someone whose only job is to uphold the law in every circumstance?
Stories like this bum me out to the umpteenth degree, because we only ever hear these stories about abuse of power and never hear the stories about the 99.99% of cops who do their jobs correctly, and protect/save lives each and every day, all we get is the bad news. But that’s just how the mainstream news operates, so that’s what we plebeians are forced to read about.
Cincinnati’s WLWT5 has the story:
The records include the dashboard camera recording that launched the patrol’s investigation in October 2013. Lee subsequently resigned ahead of being fired and was prosecuted.
In the video, Lee can be heard flirting with a female driver and the passenger he later photographed.
At one point, after the passenger told him the name of the bar where she’d been that night, he said he’d been there the week before and she wouldn’t have needed a ride home “if I would have saw you.”
He also joked about flirting with the women later, “once I turn the camera off.”After determining the driver wasn’t drunk, Lee let her leave but kept the passenger in his cruiser. He drove to a street by her house, told her his camera was shut off, made comments about her legs and breasts, then reminded her he could still give the driver of the car a ticket, the records show.
When the passenger asked Lee what he wanted, “he said he wanted to take a picture with his hand on her chest,” according to a patrol summary of the case.
As the investigation continued, the patrol found two postings Lee made on Craigslist.
“I am in Law Enforcement so if the idea of traffic stop sex sounds good let me know,” one posting said.
Another woman who performed a sexual act on Lee told investigators: “He told me to do this, he told me to do that and I basically complied. What else am I going to do in that situation, he’s a cop. He has more authority,” according to the records.
Lee, 31, was sentenced to five years in federal prison in April for violating the women’s civil rights. He pleaded guilty to four counts of violating the civil rights of female motorists and one count of cyberstalking involving threatening messages sent to the passenger.
I guess this is further proof of why every officer in the field should be wearing a body camera for accountability. Just think if this guy was never wearing a camera, and wasn’t picked up by a random (routine) footage search, and was still out there coercing women into sexual favors to get out of traffic violations…. Just think about how many officers of the law are out there right now, doing exactly this, and not wearing body cameras so there is zero accountability… It’s just not right. At least this scumbag got put in prison.