Posted on 06/18/2015 7:31:36 AM PDT by Kaslin
American police live in a place even more wondrous than the one you know from "A Prairie Home Companion." In Lake Wobegon, all the children are above average. In Police Land, every cop is a model citizen, including those who outwardly resemble criminals.
When a cop thrashes or kills someone, the ensuing investigations almost always find that what the officer did was excusable, if not commendable. Jesus Christ would get tougher scrutiny from a band of angels than most cops do from the people who review their conduct.
So it barely registered with most Americans last month when a Cleveland cop was acquitted of voluntary manslaughter for firing at least 15 shots at an unarmed couple as he stood on the hood of their car after a high-speed chase. Outcomes like that, even when the cops grossly overstepped their bounds, are the norm.
Over four years, The Chicago Tribune recently reported, only 4 percent of all 17,700 complaints against Chicago police were upheld. In those rare instances, the punishment was the equivalent of a disappointed sigh. Of the few cops found to have abused citizens, nearly half got off with verbal reprimands, and only a dozen were fired.
Even a court finding of misconduct doesn't count for much. The Tribune uncovered several cases in which victims filed lawsuits and got monetary damages -- even though the department had cleared the officers.
Consider Cleveland. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that the police department looked into 4,427 uses of force by cops over four years and gave its blessing to each one. In Houston, every shooting over six years was found by the internal affairs department to be absolutely necessary.
Same basic story in Ferguson, Mo. After the killing of Michael Brown, staffers from the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division interviewed the police chief, who admitted that "he could not remember ever imposing discipline for an improper use of force."
The feds also assume that law enforcement officers are less fallible than the pope. From January 2010 to October 2013, the Los Angeles Times reported, Border Patrol agents shot 67 people, killing 19. Three of the agents are still being investigated. Of the remaining 64, 62 were absolved. The other two got a stern lecture.
It's all part of a national pattern. Bowling Green State University criminologist Philip Stinson has done extensive research on killings by cops. His conclusion? "It's very rare that an officer gets charged with a homicide offense resulting from their on-duty conduct even though people are killed on a fairly regular basis," he told The Wall Street Journal.
Lack of accountability is a recipe for lawlessness. In 1961, the Supreme Court said that when evidence of a crime was obtained in an illegal search, it could not be used in state court. The Fourth Amendment had always required cops to get warrants before ransacking homes. But until 1961, police generally ignored the Constitution because they paid no price for violating it.
A New York City police official later recalled, "Before this, nobody bothered to take out search warrants. Although the U.S. Constitution requires warrants in most cases, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that evidence obtained without a warrant -- illegally, if you will -- was admissible in state courts. So the feeling was, why bother?"
Many cops obviously feel the same way about the rules on how they are supposed to handle suspects and bystanders. If they can get away with mistreating people, they will mistreat people.
Modern video technology makes that harder. A cop can no longer be sure that when he beats or shoots a suspect without a very good reason, he can cover up what happened. Body cameras and dashboard cameras will make police more careful -- and document their abuses.
If not for an alert citizen with a cellphone, the North Charleston, S.C., officer who fatally shot the unarmed, fleeing Walter Scott in the back would almost certainly have gotten away with it. Instead, he's been charged with murder.
But digital images matter only if authorities are prepared to punish brutal cops. The shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland was captured on squad-car video, which did not support the police account of what happened. Six months later, his killer has not been charged.
Bad cops will stop killing people unnecessarily when they know they will suffer real punishment for their crimes. Until then, why bother?
Of course. Everyone knows that our Defenders of Justice would *never*, say, shoot a leashed (knowing it was leashed) Golden Retriever (in Ohio) on the grounds that said defender claimed “I feel threatened”.
Correction: Cleveland, Mississippi, not Cleveland Ohio.
My question is: Wy do the “good” cops protect the “bad” cops?
If you are hiding the errors of your co-workers, you are JUST AS GUILTY of whatever their misdeed may be.
If these purported “good” cops would weed out the “bad” cops, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.
Why says they are? And its why, not wy
Because bad cops and there are some are news. Good cops, no matter how many there are, are not news. That’s why
If, after committing a crime, your boss announces that your company will explore whether a crime was committed and whether you were the criminal, your boss (and company) would be guilty of being accessories to the crime.
And yet, in police stations across this nation, far, far, far more officers are subjected to “internal investigations” and/or “paid administrative leave” than are arrested, convicted, and serve the entirety of their sentences.
I’m glad you’ve never made a typo. As for “good” cops, my question stands:
If there are so many of them, how can so many bad eggs get through the screening process?
If there are so many “good” cops, why do we never hear of them weeding out the scumbuckets that exist in every vocation?
Why is it that 99 times out of a hundred, a citizen’s complaint against an officer is dismissed? No other job I know of has that level of stellar employees.
How do police officers get away with trespassing and shooting dogs in their owner’s yards (on a leash in this specific case)? What would happen to YOU if you went into your neighbor’s yard and shot his dog?
There are some excellent officers out there, (the one that aided that young lady out in the middle of nowhere is a good example) but the public is getting tired of seeing cops break the law with impunity.
Something is going to break, and NOBODY is going to like the consequences.
Not possible. The median income in Cal is $61K.”Police Officer” Pay in California
Okie dokie, have you? ;-)
Of course it doesn’t, but the number of incidents where cops assault people (as you put it) is miniscule compared to the thousands of cops who do a difficult job every day of the year.
Considering the stress of the job and the crap they have to put up with, I’m surprised cops manage to have such self-control the majority of the time.
Four times.
Good for you. Most people don’t care that much.
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