Harwich DUI

[Tinballs508]

I am a resident of Harwich and have been since 1990 and I can personally attest to the absolute abuse of power by the Harwich Police Force. It is widely known on the Cape as one of the worst police forces. We have WAY too many cops for the size of our town. We have very little crime at all so it leaves these power-hungry, BORED cops to search for anything to entertain themselves with. They come out of the academy and want to put their little drills to work in the real world. This problem has gotten better and what I speak of mostly pertains to the years 2000-2006. There's been multiple lawsuits against them including one where a 17 year old kid was tailgated w/ in inches by a cop cruiser at night . The cruiser had no lights on, not even headlights. He was then harassed and literally made fun of for his acne and given no warning/citation. This is all heresay and I've only heard these stories and do not know the exact nature but they did happen to some capacity. I heard it was settled out of court and I know that the officer was terminated. Another former Harwich cop was laid off after cut-backs and he was an officer w/ numerous complaints against him. He then went on to work for the Yarmouth force only to shoot and kill a 20-something year old kid after a short chase. The kid was smoking marijuana, had no weapon and showed no sign of a weapon yet was shot several times and killed. The cop was cleared of any wrong doing.
I, personally, used to get pulled over an exuberant amount of times and only in Harwich. I am not a speeder and nearly always I was given no reason for the stop or an extremely ridiculous/false reason. (License plate light out that was not out; saying I swerved when I didn't; not completely stopping at a stop sign saying I had to fully count to 3) and very often I was searched for no reason either and when I clearly would give them NO permission they would do so anyway. I am just saying that the story this original poster conveys could very well be true and reports like this used to be all too common...absurdly common.
This problem has gotten a lot better in my experience though and from what I hear there has been a ton less problems and we have an almost completely new police force. I give credit to Harwich because I do believe they laid off/fired a lot of these officers that weren't doing the right things. It seems a lot better now and the presence seems less. We also got a giant new police headquarters building that is beautiful.