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In the not-too-distant past, police impersonators were generally just scumbags who put a light rack on their car and pulled over motorists with the intention of robbing or assaulting their victims. “Fake cop flashes badge, rapes woman,” the headlines used to read. But now police impersonation has turned from the occasional criminal act to a full-fledged industry. Just recently the owner/operators of a New York-area bounty hunters school passed out hundreds of NYPD-replica badges to recruits who used them to pull off armed robberies, according to federal prosecutors.
In Missouri, one man showed up at a local police department and announced he was a decorated federal drug agent. He said he was there to offer a small agency badly needed help in the war on drugs. Now an entire community as well as their local law enforcement professionals are trying to figure out how they got duped.
There are scores of other incidents. In New York City, a man posing as a police officer forced his way into an apartment to rape the woman who lived inside. In California a guy on a bicycle with handcuffs robbed pedestrians. Officer impersonation is a nationwide crime that has flourished in recent years, with brazen criminals sometimes going to great lengths to pull off their scams. A man on Long Island, for instance, was recently sentenced for running a virtual one-man police department. He had a car with sirens and a fake police station where he handcuffed his victims to a chair.
“You wave a badge at someone and tell them to pull over and you’d be amazed at how many people are going to obey,” Dr. Naftali Berrill, a psychologist who runs the New York Center for Neuropsychology and Forensic Behavioral Science, told USA Today in a recent interview. “They disarm their victims by appearing to be cops.” There are no statistics on number of police impersonation cases around the country, but it’s a big enough issue to prompt some big cities to take serious action. In New York City, police arrest about 100 suspects annually on charges of impersonating an officer.
The NYPD has a specialized unit, believed to be the only one in the country, dedicated to solving the cases where a suspect impersonates an officer. More departments around the nation could very well do the same. Lt. John P. McGovern, who runs the command, says the majority of the cases are home invasions or robberies. In the hopes of cutting down on police impersonators, the NYPD has copyrighted department badges. But impersonators generally rely on the fact that most people don’t look too closely at the fake badge they’re shown.
A former police detective and another man were arrested last summer on charges that they offered three-day classes for $860 in New York and New Jersey to teach students how to restrain people with batons, pepper spray and handcuffs. Prosecutors said that nearly 80 of the students were convicted felons. Police impersonation is an equal opportunity employer. Consider the case of Lizzette Garvin. She was wanted in more than five states for impersonating an officer.
For more than 20 years, she would break into gym lockers, then call the victim from the lobby and pretend to be a police officer investigating the robbery. Victims would turn over all sorts of personal information to her, from Social Security cards to ATM passwords. NYPD detectives tracked her for nearly two years until they took the case to America’s Most Wanted in April 2007. She was arrested in Indianapolis hours after the show aired.
Then there are guys like Bill Jakob. He arrived in a small Missouri town with an offer to help police fight the community’s methamphetamine problem. He had a badge and a gun and told officials he had previously worked as a drug agent in Illinois. He drove a fully equipped Ford Crown Victoria with all the law enforcement bells and whistles.
But Jakob wasn’t a cop. He was an unemployed truck driver with a criminal record and had recently filed for bankruptcy. In the aftermath, at least 17 people have sued, including an elderly woman who was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward because she didn’t cooperate with the police and a man who said Jakob held a gun to his head and threatened to shoot while the man’s child watched.
“Not only did they break in and threaten to kill people and violate their civil rights, they stole money, prescription drugs and legally owned weapons. It’s crazy that this could happen in 2008,” said attorney Dan Briegel, who represents the woman who was placed in the psychiatric ward for a week. Complaints about Jakob’s rough treatment of suspects led a reporter from the Gasconade County Republican newspaper to ask the sheriff about the new officer.
That’s when Jakob’s story unraveled. “He had credentials. He had a badge. He had a phone number to call for verification,” an embarrassed Mayor Otis Schulte told the New York Times. “I don’t know what else we could have done.” When police called the number Jakob provided, the woman who answered verified he had worked for the task force.
The mayor and other authorities now suspect the person at the other end of the phone was Jakob’s wife. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites        
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