What were you convicted of before this incident? Were they related in any way?
Oh it's ok for a totally crooked cop to charge me with a completely bogus felony, cost me 100's if not 1000's of dollars, and destroy my job because I had proir weed and MDMA charges from a decade earlier?
Well ok I guess if that's how you feel about things.
For example, if you have past convictions for drug possession and the corruption in this case was that the officer saw you, knew your history, just assumed you were guilty and refused to back down when he realized that you were clean. Alternately, you were driving along and (From your account name, I'm going to assume that you're brown) he sees a brown guy driving through a "bad area" and decides to make a bust, regardless of your guilt or innocence.
Both are misconduct. Both are wrong but I believe that the other poster was just trying to get a mental image.
It beyond sucks, and should be something police truly fear doing due to lawsuit exposure.
I was arrested on a completely bogus felony "destruction of evidence" charge about a decade ago while driving my car though a "bad part" of town (think how discriminatory that is at face value, btw) by a totally crooked cop who eventually was thrown off the force for illegal activities.
I was arrested and would have been held for months in jail if I didn't have the resources to bond out, which cost somewhere around $400 to do.
I lost a really great job a few days later as my small town publishes all arrests in the newspaper and my boss or his boss saw my name in it I'm sure.
The first thing I told my PD was "under no circumstances was I going to take a plea in this case!" and explained that I have always pled when guilty in the past.
I could tell he understood my resolve. In the end, the cop was thrown off the force and one day I showed up to court ready to battle and he told "great news...you've been null-processed and its over."
I didn't know to feel ecstatic or furious over what had happened. I still don't.