City and Cop sued over false DUI arrests. Settlement reached for $450,000.

A former Chicago police officer who was once lauded for his aggressive DUI arrests by Mothers Against Drunk Drivers turned out to be a fraud.  He had falsified evidence and helped wrongly convict many people of DUI charges.  Now he is paying for it.  Not only costing him his job but now costing the city he works for nearly half a million dollars. It just goes to show you that some police are good and some are bad.  Some police use the power given to them to help and some use it to advance their own agenda and promote themselves.  The more arrests, the more convictions, the more recognition a police officer gets.  That's one way to look at it but it doesn't protect the public and makes good people distrustful of the police.

It looks like this jerk was giving out DUI charges so that he could get overtime going to court!

Here is the article.

Chicago to pay off $450,000 to 2 drivers over false DUI charges.
By: Annie Sweeney

Former Chicago police Officer Richard Fiorito was once honored by Mothers Against Drunk Driving for his aggressive DUI arrests, but he was pulled off street duty three years ago amid allegations that he had falsified dozens of the charges.

After numerous lawsuits, the city has formally agreed to pay the last of the drivers who had alleged wrongdoing by Fiorito. In a judgment entered Monday in federal court, James Dean Jr. was awarded $100,000 in a lawsuit accusing Fiorito of false arrest and malicious prosecution. Four months earlier, the city settled with another motorist for $100,000. The city also agreed to pay lawyers for both drivers a combined $250,000 in legal fees.

The resolution came on the eve of a trial at which Dean's attorneys planned to allege that Fiorito arrested Dean for DUI outside the Town Hall Police District just four minutes after he was freed from the station on unrelated traffic charges. Yet no officers inside the district house believed Dean was drunk when he left, Dean's attorneys contend.  The award to Dean and the earlier settlement by motorist Steve Lopez mark the end to litigation over Fiorito, according to city Law Department spokesman Roderick Drew, who said the city never admitted wrongdoing on Fiorito's part. A separate lawsuit filed against Fiorito in 2009 resulted in an additional $25,000 settlement, Drew said.

In a telephone interview Tuesday evening, Fiorito, 63, stood by all his DUI arrests.  "I don't regret one day of it," he said of his 13 years on the force. He resigned in December.  He also denied allegations he directed racial and other slurs at some of the drivers he arrested for DUI.  "Anybody that says I did is a liar," he said.  Drivers started coming forward with similar stories about Fiorito in 2003, according to attorney Jon Erickson, who brought a number of the lawsuits.  "I remember being astounded by the brazenness of his dishonesty," Erickson said Tuesday.  In court filings, attorneys alleged that Fiorito was motivated to fabricate the arrests by the overtime that he received to attend traffic court.

Erickson said he won not-guilty verdicts for about five drivers arrested for DUI by Fiorito and then tracked down about 40 others who said they had been victimized too.  Several of the complaints came from members of Chicago's gay and lesbian community who felt they had been targeted by Fiorito. He was also accused of using hateful language and slurs against other minority groups, the attorneys said.

Amid a flurry of lawsuits, the Cook County state's attorney's office dropped charges against more than 130 drivers arrested by Fiorito for DUI, and Chicago police removed him from street duty. However, in 2010, county prosecutors refused to prosecute Fiorito, drawing criticism from lawyers for some of the alleged victims.  Some of the motorists had wanted to pursue damages against Fiorito but lost out because they had pleaded guilty to lesser traffic offenses in exchange for the DUI charge being dropped, the attorneys said.  Only Dean and Lopez held out, insisting that they did nothing wrong. "Both refused to take any deal and saw it all the way through to the end," said attorney Torreya Hamilton, who worked with Erickson on the federal lawsuit. "And lucky for them."  Lopez, a truck driver, said it wasn't a hard choice.

Fiorito stopped him five years ago as he was driving home early one morning from a family gathering. With a young family and a two-year-old mortgage, Lopez said his clean driving record meant the world to him. A ticket of any kind would have jeopardized his job and future, said the high school graduate from Brighton Park.  "This is how I provide for my family," Lopez said on his lunch break Tuesday as he stood outside the delivery truck he is currently driving. "I'm a driver. If that's what's on my record, it's like someone gave me a Class X Felony. It's hard to find a good job."

After being charged with the DUI, Lopez had a painful conversation with his boss, who nevertheless still trusted in him. In a sworn statement as part of the lawsuit, Lopez said he had one beer earlier the night of his arrest.  Lopez went to traffic court every month as the case worked its way through the system.  The father of three had earned his commercial driver's license just a month before Fiorito ticketed him, something that would have meant a significant pay boost and greater job opportunities. But immediately after the arrest, the CDL was revoked, and he never got a chance to use it. It has since been restored.

NFL to push for more punishment for players who recieve DUI charges.

Three players have been arrested in the last nine days?  Maybe the NFL needs to hand down more punishment for players that are busted for DUI.  That is just what it seems they are trying to do.  It looks like the union and the owners have been talking about this for sometime but the owners don't want to make the necessary concessions to make it happen.

In, my opinion I don't think they need to focus on more stiff punishment for players accused of drunk driving.  But maybe if they are convicted of a drunk driving offense then more on field sanctions would be reasonable.  The simple fact of the matter is that when a regular person gets a DUI charge they may face negative ramifications at their place of employment.  The players should be held to that same standard.  To enforce some sort of punishment based on just a "charge" or a better term is aqcusation of drunk driving simply isn't fair.  After all, they should be presumed innocent.

Here is the article that inspired this post.


NFL has been pushing for increased DUI discipline
by Mike Florio

After a rash of recent DUI arrests, with three players popped in nine days for driving drunk, it’s obvious that whatever the NFL is doing to prevent players from possibly killing paying customers isn’t working. Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News agrees that more needs to be done.  “A guy over the legal limit for alcohol behind the wheel of a car, in fact, is as dangerous as a football player like Plaxico Burress going into a crowded club and having a couple of drinks with a loaded unlicensed handgun in his pants,” Lupica contends.

He’s right.  And, actually, a small piece of metal whizzing around a bar may be less dangerous than a 2,000-pound chunk of it flying down the street.  Per a source with knowledge of the NFL’s thinking, the league has wanted to increase the penalties for several years.  The league contends, we’re told, that the union has resisted.  In fairness to the NFLPA, however, the league could get higher DUI penalties if the league was willing to make the kind of concession necessary to get the union to agree.  If, for example, the NFL were willing to export the appeals process for violations of the substance-abuse policy to a neutral arbitrator, the players may be willing to allow that arbitrator to uphold or reject the stiffer proposed punishments for players who drive drunk.

Thus, while the NFLPA understandably is protecting the rights of men who technically are on their own time and who face consequences via the criminal justice system, both sides need to come together and look at the bigger picture.  Ultimately, this is an entertainment business.  And the men providing the entertainment shouldn’t randomly be endangering the lives of the folks they’re trying to entertain, either by driving drunk or by throwing swords into the stands.