Monday, March 26, 2007

The Only Ones Allowed To Falsely Accuse Enough

"An angry Brooklyn janitor accused cops yesterday of faking a DNA test in a futile effort to bully him into confessing to raping an 8-year-old girl.

School custodian Francis Evelyn said detectives confronted him with a phony DNA chart that they claimed proved he assaulted the girl.

"They offered me a deal to change my story," said Evelyn, 58, who was cleared of all charges after his harrowing arrest last week. "But how can I change my story if I'm telling the truth?"

Even though Evelyn proclaimed his innocence, cops relentlessly pressured him to admit to the rape at Public School 91 in Wingate, he said.

"They were just pushing me and telling me what they wanted me to say," said Evelyn, an immigrant from Trinidad who worked at the school for two decades. "It was a big lie."

NYPD spokesman Michael Collins said, "I'm not commenting on that," on allegations that cops lied about a DNA match.

The false rape claim roiled the school and resulted in the jailing of Evelyn and the suspension of respected Principal Solomon Long, who was accused of sweeping the allegation under the rug.

Long said the girl first accused a fellow student of raping her, then claimed Evelyn had violated her. Neither story was truthful. In between, her mother said her father may also have sexually assaulted her, a claim that authorities also dismissed as false.

The principal says he deals with abuse claims regularly and knew the charge was dead wrong.

"It just didn't ring true," he said."

The courts have said its perfectly fine and dandy for police to lie to a suspect, but this is what happens when they also lie to the community.

Somehow, the phony DNA results were "leaked" to the public in order for the community to put pressure on Mr. Evelyn to confess, and parents, educators, and students alike were hearing from their beat cops how it was a done deal, wink-wink, because they had the goods on Evelyn.

This is but one of the reasons why I never much cared for allowing the cops to begin telling tall tales. Interrogators use whatever they think is necessary to hoodwink a suspect, and as rumors are ALWAYS apt to do, such lies and half-truths work their way through to the rank and file until no one is sure precisely WHAT the truth is. Some perfectly honest officers get wind of what they think is the real story, and presto-chango, an innocent man is tried and convicted in the court of public opinion.

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