How Sociopathic Parents Use Police Reports for Defamation

How Sociopathic Parents Use Police Reports for Defamation

Written by: Rob    

 
A common problem that many parents in child custody battles experience is the malicious false police reports generated by the nasty ex exhibiting sociopathic behaviors. Such people may suffer from a personality disorder associated with pathological lying such as BPD or NPD, but not all people with BPD or NPD will resort to filing false police reports.

You might think that when the police investigate and find that the ex lied or can’t keep her or his story straight, that will be the end of it. But for many target parents, that is not the case at all. Instead, the nasty ex takes those reports and uses them as the basis for spreading defamation that looks very official and credible looking to the average naive person on the street. With a little effort, she or he can have dozens or more people believing the lies by using the police reports to deceive and manipulate them.

Sometimes, false police reports even get people arrested wrongly. Look at what happened to the father in the article Ben Vonderheide Exposes Pennsylvania’s Abusive Child Profiteering Racket. He was falsely arrested and his son taken from him. Later, his falsely accusing ex and her new boyfriend were convicted of filing false police reports in a criminal court with its far higher evidentiary standards than family court. But he is still suffering from the damage caused by the false police reports even years later.

More often, false police reports and the resulting “official looking” papers generated are used to defame and harass the target parent. This is a common element in the distortion campaigns practiced by Borderlines, Narcissists, and other abusively dishonest personalities.

What Police Reports Contain

Police reports do not have a standard format. Not only do they vary from department to department, there can even be multiple versions of a police report for a single incident.

A typical police report contains several informational sections. These include data such as the following:

Name(s) and identifying information on alleged victim
Name(s) and identifying informaton on alleged perpetrator
Incident location
Date and time of incident
Name(s) of witnesses
Alleged crime expressed as possible charges, usually expressed in terms of legal code
Alleged victim’s description of alleged crime
Initial statements of police officers
Lists of evidence collected or seized
Interviews with witnesses
Follow-up interviews with alleged victim
Interview with alleged perpetrator
Follow-up interviews with other parties
Results of field tests
Results of lab tests
Sections 1 to 8 are found in nearly every report. Depending upon what happened, the police may never get around to creating or adding the rest. Furthermore, it is not unusual for the police to start circulating a report without the later sections even if they have them or are working on them. “Victim’s reports” are often reports handled out to people claiming a crime was committed prior to investigation without any verification whatsoever of accuracy. Yet because they are on “official” paper, the average naive Jane or Joe might actually believe they are accurate and truthful when neither is even remotely certain.

For instance, see the arrest report for Henry Gates, President Barack Obama’s professor friend who works at Harvard University. There is no indication of follow-up investigation whatsoever. You only see the first few sections reflected on that report. Gates comes off looking like he might be a burglar resisting arrest.

But that’s not the only version of the report circulated. See a second version of the Henry Gates police report. Now he looks like a guy who is overly accusatory about racism and mean to cops.

Notice the differences? One has a booking record reflecting an arrest, the other has a much more extensive description of the incident. The first was circulated by FOX News. The second was circulated by a website called A View From the Right.

Police reports don’t determine guilt. But if you didn’t already know about this case from the news and a friend of your showed you the first report and said this man is a robber who resisted arrest, would you believe it? There isn’t anything to contradict it, in fact it looks like it might match what your friend is saying.

Now if you got the second report, that one shows that Sergeant Crowley thinks the man lives in the house but is acting very aggressively. If your police hating friend showed it to you after expressing an opinion, you might think it appears that Crowley intentionally lured an upset Gates outside his home so he could arrest him for being disorderly in public. If your cop friend showed it to you, you might think Gates is a raving nut and deserved to be arrested.

What’s the truth? Whatever it is, it certainly isn’t entirely captured in the police reports.

Various news organizations published and then hid different versions of these police reports. Others have speculated they were trying to hide the behaviors of Gates for various reasons. When the mainstream news media with experienced reporters can’t even keep the police reports straight, do you think you will be able to understand and detect an inaccurate or false police report? The odds are good that you will be unable to do so.

How Sociopaths Alter Police Reports for Defamation Purposes

Police reports don’t tell the whole story, but they can be incriminating and misleading. This is exactly why sociopathic parents like to file false police reports and then use them to defame and harass their victims.

It is a common trick for a sociopathic parent to spread around incomplete versions of police reports that omit the investigative sections that reflect what the police found when they interviewed witnesses, collected and tested evidence, and tried to piece together what really happened.

The first sections typically identify the alleged victim and alleged perpetrator. But they don’t say “alleged” on them. All it takes to get a police report naming somebody as a perpetrator, offender, or some other incriminating term is to lie to the cops. They will gladly hand a copy of the false police report on request to the false accuser, thereby providing her or him with ammunition to attack the actual victim. Now the real perp, the sociopathic parent, has a document that has the police falsely calling the real victim out as a perpetrator. She or he may start showing this to teachers, principals, doctors, nurses, pastors, neighbors, family members, and more to destroy the reputation of the target parent and to incite these people to help them attack and ruin the target parent and keep the children away.

Later sections include statements by the alleged victim. Often the police will talk with this person more than once. Sociopaths often have trouble keeping their “facts” (really lies) straight. So if there are two or three different interviews with police, there will likely be two or three (sometimes even more) variations of the lies with significant differences. How can they fix this? Simple, leave out all but one version. Often it simply takes not copying the entire report to turn a complete report that clearly looks like a nutcase’s ravings into convincing looking abridged report.

If somebody shows you a police report to try to convince you that her or his ex is a psycho abuser, be very skeptical. If you don’t see all or nearly all the sections I mentioned above in the report, particularly repeated interviews with the alleged victim and with other witnesses, you are probably looking at an incomplete report. You should strongly consider that the person is trying to deceive and manipulate you. This is all the more likely if you have never spent significant time with the accused person. Pathological liars are adept at identifying gullible people who lack sufficient insight to resist their deceit and manipulation. Having little direct knowledge of the accused means you are likely to be gullible.

If all the sections are there, read them all and see if it makes any sense. Look for inconsistencies, particularly in the accuser’s story. Often these people are such liars that they can’t remember what they said from day to day. Every time they tell their victimhood story, it will be different. That’s likely because it didn’t happen like they said.

Look for motivations. Why is this person showing you the report, anyway? If it seems the person is trying to get you to take sides, play the victim, solicit you for money to help, or otherwise get something from you, the odds are high that she or he is trying to deceive and manipulate you.

Ultimately, if somebody was never charged with a crime, you should be extremely skeptical of the police report. Except possibly for the well-connected, that generally means the case was so weak that the prosecutor’s office thought they would lose.

Be Somewhat Skeptical Of Convictions, Too

Sadly, in this era of government tyranny and routine violations of people’s rights, a conviction doesn’t always mean actual guilt, either, even if the accused person “confessed” to the crime.

Prosecutors like to scare people with extreme scenarios to force them to plea-bargain so they can claim another “win” when running for re-election without having to spend much time on the case. Go after an accused shoplifter with accusations of murder (somebody died in the store, they must have caused it even though there are no witnesses or evidence!), trumped up threats of 50 years in prison and then offer to plea down to a 1 year sentence with full probation. Many innocent people will take that “deal” and admit guilt or plead “no contest” even if they didn’t commit a crime because they can’t accept the risk, no matter how slight, of spending the rest of their lives in prison, especially for a crime they didn’t commit.

If they have seen public defenders in action, they know many of them are so incompetent, lazy, or unethical that they won’t even bother to try a serious defense against a weak prosecution case. Thus the falsely accused may believe that a conviction with probation is way better than exhausting one’s life savings on lawyers with no reimbursement possible even if they are sure they would be able to prove their innocence. When you consider the full implications of fighting false criminal charges via an expensive trial, it is clear why some people plead “no contest” or “confess” to a crime they didn’t do.