I've been wanting to start a thread just like this for a while.

Props to being committed to the thread even tho there hasn't been much chit chat.




The only thing I know of off the top of my head at the moment is about these officers that were extorting drugs (mostly large amounts of cannabis) & cash from drivers. The articles have already been posted in the news forum, but just "for the record" of this thread here they are.

Quote:

---

Two former Rohnert Park police officers accused of extorting drugs, cash from motorists on Highway 101


Two former Rohnert Park police officers are facing extortion charges for allegedly pulling over drivers on Highway 101 and taking their drugs and money under threat of arrest, authorities said Friday.

Brendon Jacy Tatum and Joseph Huffaker were part of a team of police officers assigned to seize illegal drugs from motorists between Cloverdale and Rohnert Park between 2015 and 2017. But officials said the two took drugs and money from motorists they pulled over by threatening to arrest them if they did not consent. Then, officials said, they did not report the stops or submit the drugs and money as evidence.

The stops, however, were captured on video by their body cameras, authorities said................

---

Quote:

---

Records Missing for at Least 800 Pounds of Marijuana Seized by Rohnert Park Police

Documentation for the destruction of about 800 pounds of marijuana seized by Rohnert Park Department of Public Safety officers in recent years is missing from court files, KQED has found, despite the officers writing in police reports that the court ordered the evidence destroyed.

Rohnert Park has released 40 police reports involving traffic stops by former police Sgt. Jacy Tatum and his partners Matthew Snodgrass and Joseph Huffaker in response to a public records request. KQED requested the reports after nine drivers came forward with accounts of questionable stops and seizures along Highway 101 involving Rohnert Park police officers. The city plans to release more incident reports on a rolling basis...............

---

Quote:

---

‘Highway Robbery’: Drivers Allege Rohnert Park Police Illegally Seized Cannabis, Cash

Huedell Freeman was heading south on Highway 101 through Cloverdale and was just over the Sonoma County line when he said a police squad car flipped a U-Turn across a 25-foot grass median and pulled up behind him with lights flashing.

'He grinned and smiled at me and did not respond. At that moment I knew I'd been had. I knew that this was not a normal traffic stop.' -Huedell Freeman

Freeman said he was carrying 47 pounds of marijuana in his rental car that day, Dec. 29, 2016, but said he wasn’t too worried about the weed because he had a permit to grow medical cannabis in Mendocino County. He was driving it down to his client, a licensed dispensary called The Higher Path in Sherman Oaks, near Los Angeles. And, he said, he had the paperwork to prove it.

It struck Freeman as odd, though, that the two police officers pulling him over weren’t from Cloverdale. They were from Rohnert Park, some 40 miles south on 101. Freeman said he’d been obeying the traffic laws, and the cruise control on the car was set at the speed limit. He expected the traffic stop to end quickly......................

---