(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Omaha woman forced to move due to harassment by a cop [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2022-11-21

According to the Omaha World-Herald, for some time, Quatisha Valentine had walked out of her home in the Muse Omaha apartments across from Creighton University to find her car vandalized. On most of those occasions, a bottom-feeder had dumped trash on her car. At least one time, someone had thrown an egg at her car. In one of the most unnerving incidents of all, someone had punctured a tire.

On Nov. 4, according to a post on her Facebook, Valentine discovered a large bag of trash on her car. When the apartment office told her their cameras didn’t show anything, she set up a camera in her window. It only took one night to hit paydirt.

Sunday night, she wrote, she watched a man go to a nearby dumpster, take out a bag of trash, rip it open and dump it on top of her car. The man repeated his actions again to put trash on the trunk of her car. She took a photo of the man walking away from the car after the trash had been dumped. Valentine’s photos show the man had dumped old drink containers, an oat milk carton, food takeout boxes and plastic bags on her car.

When Valentine went out to confront the bottom-feeder, she recognized him as William Klees, an officer with the Omaha Police Department. Valentine called the police, but when they arrived Klees didn’t open the door for them.

By that Tuesday, Klees had been placed on paid administrative leave. Watch more coverage from local ABC affiliate KETV here.

By then, Valentine had left her apartment and was staying with friends. She told KETV that she believes Klees was targeting her, and doesn’t feel that she had any security.

Klees, a five-year veteran of the police department, was cited for misdemeanor criminal mischief on Nov. 11; he faces a $1,000 fine and six months in jail. Valentine believed the misdemeanor wasn’t nearly adequate, in part because she felt harassed. I’d add that intentionally puncturing Valentine’s tire takes this to another level.

On Nov. 14, hours before he was due to meet with internal affairs, Klees resigned. Apparently his lawyers had given him the same message that Omaha’s police chief gave to reporters—he was going to be fired.

Police Chief Todd Schmaderer said in a written statement that Klees resigned before an internal affairs interview scheduled for Monday. The resignation was accepted, Schmaderer said, and the Omaha Police Department will provide documentation to the Nebraska Crime Commission seeking a revocation of Klees’ law enforcement certificate. “Officer Klees has completely disrupted the peace and sense of safety for Ms. Valentine. His actions are not indicative of the values of the hard-working women and men of the Omaha Police Department,” Schmaderer said. “His conduct is unbecoming of an officer and warrants his removal from the OPD.”

This is cold comfort to Valentine, who told KETV that she has moved out of Muse Omaha and is looking for another place to live. She said that Klees “knows where I stay, he knows where I live,” and no longer feels safe there. A friend started a GoFundMe to raise money for Valentine’s moving expenses; as of this writing it’s only garnered $140 out of the goal of $14,000. If there’s any justice at all, though, the city of Omaha ought to foot the bill. She has to find another place to live because a city employee breached his trust in a despicable way. If I were Valentine, about the only way I wouldn’t at least be thinking about suing would be if the city of Omaha paid for her moving expenses. On the face of it, she can really draw blood.

This is a pretty dicey situation—and would be even without any possible racial considerations; Klees is White and Valentine is Black. As outrageous as Klees’ behavior was, this is just barely on the line between a felony and a misdemeanor. Unless I’m very wrong, about the only way this could have been bumped this up to a felony—and something that could have kept Klees in jail—would have been if he’d slashed two tires rather than one.

That doesn’t mean, however, that we should be done holding Klees to account. There needs to be a deep dive into every single case Klees worked in his five years as a cop, as well as the process by which he got his badge in the first place. If this guy was brazen enough to do this to Valentine, what else has he done? Moreover, the fact he even thought this was okay raises questions about how he passed any psychological evaluation he needed to take in order to be hired. I’m reminded that Antoinette Frank, the New Orleans cop who killed one of her fellow officers, as well as two members of a family who ran a Vietnamese restaurant, somehow got hired despite a psychiatrist advising in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t fit to be an officer.

It won’t surprise me in the least if we end up adding Klees to a list of bad cops who never should have been hired in the first place, or kept their badges despite numerous red flags. Take Tim Loehmann, Tamir Rice’s killer. He was somehow hired in Cleveland despite being deemed mentally unfit for duty by a police department in a nearby suburb. Or Cassie Barker, the Mississippi cop who kept her job despite leaving her daughter in a hot car not long after being hired—only to let her daughter roast to death in another hot car two days later. Or Frank, who was caught red-handed lying about her employment history and still got hired.

This situation is yet more proof that we need to have a conversation about police hiring standards. If people who even think it’s acceptable to vandalize others’ property aren’t stopped at the gates, is it any wonder that people don’t trust the police?

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/21/2137592/-Omaha-woman-forced-to-move-due-to-harassment-by-a-cop

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/