The Incompetent Escapades of Ady Johnson
I did a little Google search a while back and found that, in addition to this site of course, Officer Johnson has one other notable mention. It seems that she found drugs on a guy during an illegal search a while back. Arresting a guy and having the court of appeals decide it was an illegal search must be a good source of embarrassment for a cop.
You can read the whole document here:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/iowastatecases/app/7-762.pdf
The best part is her testimony:
Q. You had suspicion that it was drugs?
Johnson: Yes.
Q. You didn’t have probable cause?
Johnson: Correct.
So not only is this funny because she was horrible on the stand, but it also highlights some pretty dishonorable police action. It raises the question of why she knowingly conducted an illegal search.
In other news, it seems a female police officer came to the neighbor’s house the other day looking for my roommate. It was probably Officer Johnson because I don’t think there are many other female officers in Ames. But it also seems likely that Officer Johnson would have been dumb enough to show up at the wrong house. It also seems likely that she would be dishonorable enough to tell the neighbors what she wanted, which wasn’t that bad but still none of their business.
January 12th, 2010 at 12:29 am
It did turn out that Officer Johnson was the one slandering my roommate. Apparently she also left a message for him. When he returned her call (twice), she never called back. Apparently she had lost interest in the matter she wanted to ask him about, but that just isn’t right.
As for my situation, funny story… I contacted the Iowa State Ombudsman’s office about the police department’s underhanded ways of dealing with public records requests. I complained about three things:
1) I was initially told that I needed to subpoena dashcam video. This is incorrect and it is a misdemeanor to (knowingly) lie about public records laws.
2) I was forced to give my name instead of just the date, time, and officer. Iowa public records law does not allow for a department to require any more information than would be needed by a subject matter expert to find the record.
3) I was quoted $23 for 30-45 minutes of VHS tape.
The ombudsman was unhelpful regarding the first two but he did great on the last one. He did some digging and found that the flat-rate pricing structure was totally illegal. The city council had to vote on a new pricing schedule and apparently it passed. So the police department lost their future (illegal) profits.