‘Testilying’ by Police: A Stubborn Problem
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
My friend got off and the police officer blushed. Nothing else happened. The cop was never prosecuted for anything, not for perjury, not for testilying.
In case you were wondering, the answer is "yes": my friend is a black male.
edit: Just wanted to say that yes, these kinds of things also happen to people of all races, especially working class people.
Of course, this would disqualify me from ever sitting in a jury box.
Probably not; I've been on a criminal jury where virtually all the testimony was from police, and the questions in voir dire wouldn't have he really revealed that attitude unless it was so extreme that the prospective juror themself felt it would prevent them from fairly evaluating the evidence.
It's along the lines of jury nullification. The people have some recourse in overriding court rules and court rulings when the court is not behaving in accordance with justice.
I have great respect for most parts of our justice system. This is not one of those parts, therefore I choose civil disobedience.
Do they get punished if they say yes to that and somehow it becomes obvious they're not doing that?
Jurors are asked if they will treat the word of law enforcement as always true. Jurors are disqualified if they don't say yes. Jurors are sworn, as you say, to tell the truth. Presumable jurors get punished if they end up acting counter to their previous word?
Thus, jurors that end up on the bench are forced by law to act as if every word by law enforcement is true, even if it contradicts physical reality. No?
If a juror stated that they believed that the word of law enforcement were always true, the defense attorney would almost certainly challenge them for cause, as that is clear bias, and they would not be selected for the jury.
In practice it's a balancing act, where the prosecution wants jurors who trust law enforcement and the defense wants jurors who are skeptical of law enforcement.
It is illegal to punish a juror for the decision they make during a trial. This is often referred to as "jury nullification" (or rather, is an important part of jury nullification).
Realistically, jurors will instead be challenged for cause by the defense if they do say yes to that question.
They might be challenged by the prosecution if they indicate a bias against police testimony (either for cause or as a peremptory challenge, depending on the details and the prosecutor and the judge.)
Both sides look for jurors who have bias where they will come with a pre-shared opinion. The last jury I was on included a former US Attorney, an insurance investigator and a NAACP regional director. We were asked to answer questions honestly and nobody had access to our process.
I’ve been on 3 juries, and in 2/3 we partially or fully acquitted a defendant based on many factors. Frankly, in each case I walked away with an appreciation that the system can work.
No. If that were the case, there would be no need for evidence, a judge, a jury, or a trial. "Just ask the cops" is not how this system works.
My own limited experience on a jury is that, because of the way jurors are selected, they tend to be fairly deferential to authority (especially the judge's authority). Arguing for jury nullification or any similar concept is at a minimum going to freak your fellow jurors out, and I wouldn't be surprised if in practice they might ask the judge to kick you off the jury and use one of the alternates (regardless of whatever the legality of the situation calls for).
That's not my experience, and mere reservations about the credibility of police wouldn't usually justify a challenge for cause, and prosecutors have a finite number of peremptory challenges. (Now if you say cops are all liars and everything they say must be disregarded, sure, that’ll probably get you tossed.)
The bare minimum I'd need would be "yes, so long as they're not contradicted by less inherently unreliable evidence than that which relies on human memory".
In my experience, the defense asked specific questions related to this exact topic and sought out jurors who agreed that police testimony is not guaranteed to be factual. I have to assume this is common. They had no problem filling the juror box with jurors approved by both sides.
That question came up the last time I was called for jury duty. But it was the people who affirmed that they believe police are always truthful who were excluded.
The risk here is that there are people fighting to get out of prison for things they're not guilty of. If you have realistic expectations that police and their representative prosecutors can and do lie, please exercise caution.
If you say "You shouldn't believe anything a cop testifies to" will get you booted pretty quickly.
If you say this you won't be selected. Engineers and Scientists routinely get denied because of the application of logic.
And guess which answer got people dismissed?
Remember the prosecution have a limited number of dismissals and statements like that are desired by the defense.
You'd be surprised. The DAs/lawyers on the other side can see right through this, and don't want it. They want someone that is more likely to show blind trust to the law side.
If the system considers police testimony as ground truth, why bother with judge and jury?
There's no such thing as impartial. Unless you either have no emotions or have omniscient knowledge of everything (robot or God, basically), you'll always view a set of facts through an emotional lens that's been tinged by your past experiences, which are a tiny subset of everyone's past experiences. Part of the reason we put multiple people on a jury is to average out those differences.
Then again, I brought up unconscious bias and implicit association tests last time I was called for jury duty, and was excused by a very impatient and skeptical sounding judge. Questioning the whole premise of the legal system doesn't go over very well with the legal system.
The criminal justice system _does not think_ jury nullification is a legitimate use of the powers of a juror. Rather, the criminal justice system more views it as something of an unfortunate trade-off.
Why not? That's often by far the best case scenario.
I’m not saying our system is perfect but where’s the better alternative?
I sat on a jury that included testimony by a police officer.
Many months had passed since the incident and the cop said a bunch of things, then the defense said "You just said X, but in your incident report you wrote Y."
One of the jurors was stuck on "We should believe the police officer because he is a police officer" for about 60 minutes, before eventually becoming convinced that nothing he said added up.
> juror picks one
"But a police officer produced [the other one]! We should trust it!"
I know many of us dread jury service, but really, if we don't go, then we're leaving all of these decisions to people like that, who are willing to blindly believe the police.
A trial that largely relied on eyewitness testimony (all of which differed from individual to individual in important details) for evidence. I knew from my Psych studies that eyewitness testimony is a smidgen better than bullshit (see: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-...) but I was unable to hang the jury (the rest of whom wanted to throw the book at this kid, and yes the jury was all white and the kid was black and this was Boston, one of the most subtly-racist places I've ever lived in) because the defense did not present the inaccuracy of eyewitness testimony as evidence/argument. You are (paradoxically and incredibly frustratingly) not allowed to use outside knowledge to inform your decision... Only what was actually presented at the trial. I literally left that jury in tears, being consoled by the older women on the jury who applauded my valiant but unsuccessful defense (yeah, I'm a guy, but I give a shit).
While I can't go back to that guy and apologize for being a part of the system that let him down, I do now contribute monthly to https://www.innocenceproject.org/causes/eyewitness-misidenti... ... "Eyewitness misidentification is the greatest contributing factor to wrongful convictions proven by DNA testing, playing a role in more than 70% of convictions overturned through DNA testing nationwide."
There is some effort to reform the system going on based on the evidence that continues to emerge, but it will take years.
From what I understand (I'm not from US), you are told this by the judge, but in fact you can (and are allowed by law) to use anything you want to form your decision.
People do it anyway, and it's highly unlikely that they'll be found out, but the problem is it's a double-edged sword: in this case, justice might have demanded it; on the other hand, a Klansman could use the same approach to get another member off the hook for an obvious murder conviction.
If I could do it again I would have hung the jury. Let's just say the system in place makes it veeerrryyy difficult to do so... which is of course a perverse incentive.
I'm still kicking myself (this is years later) because normally I'm a person who sticks my neck out for my own principles, and that time I succumbed. I won't make the same mistake again.
In my case, I'd have liked to think that I'm not particularly biased for or against police, though news stories like this one don't help in that regard. But when I sat in a jury box, I don't recall it coming up. The only question from voir dire that I can immediately recall was the defense attorney making sure I understood accusation != guilt.
With that said, I did up having to consider the police witness testimony unreliable. Not because I thought they were lying because they could get away with it, but because it was too inconsistent from one officer to the next. That was one of the first things we agreed on in the jury room, that the police testimony was too inconsistent to be useful, and that we would need to focus on the other evidence (video, DNA testing, call records, et. al.)
Being skeptical of witness accounts is fine, but you admitted partiality specifically based on their occupation - I assume they want people who as much as possibly will evaluate the account based only the facts at hand.
i served on the second jury; the police officer was blatantly lying but there was no evidence which corroborated their story anyway.
In case you're wondering, me and mine are some of the whitest people you'll meet. It happens to black people more, but it can happen to anyone.
People of every race have trouble identifying people who are of some other race.
Basically: A big headache for the poor DA. So it is easier to keep a secret list of cops to not be trusted or called to the stand, like they do in Philly.
Oh that’s interesting. I’ve never heard about that but I could believe it. Seems like Philly’s citizens are sick of it though: they just elected civil rights attorney Larry Krasner as District Attorney. He has promised to handle the problems that the philly PD causes, and he came out swinging. Fired 31 prosecutors in his first week.
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/20/larry-krasner-philadelph...
Reading more into the article "Bronx dropped the case. Then the court sealed the case file, hiding from view a problem so old and persistent that the criminal justice system sometimes responds with little more than a shrug: false testimony by the police."
The judge themselves are obstructing justice. Where I am from the prosecutor would have turned and charge the officer on the spot.
Like as a judge how do you even trust the testimony of that officer or any officer anymore if the rate of perjury is half of what the article implies. They are not talking about "I don't remember correctly." or "Maybe he mistook him for the wrong person." They literally planted evidences and then perjured themselves.
I really don't understand the police organization in the U.S. It incentivizes
I think it would be a very disruptive idea at first, because prosecutorial discretion has been so deeply ingrained in our legal system.
I'm not sure sure that it's ultimately a terrible idea though. There are so many laws that we all unknowingly break a few per day. A paranoid person might even suggest it's intentional so as to always have some leverage whenever it's needed.
Without discretion, there's no possibility of leverage against honest citizens. Proposing such expansive laws would be met with much more forceful citizen opposition, and lead to the repeal of the existing ones. And the police wouldn't get the free pass they now enjoy for false testimony.
I can't claim to have all the details figured out, but it's not an absurd possibility off the bat. The scope and deliberate impenetrability of the law is a serious problem that I think will only grow worse over time.
I also think prosecutors are absolutely negligent when it comes to the police and others they need a relationship with for their other day to day activities.
I've kind of come to the conclusion that we need a _separate_ prosecutor's office for police matters.
It's just as bullying as false testimony, but far more common. I suspect a magnitude more innocent people are screwed by this than by purgery. Other countries, like the UK, seem to have more fair systems.
The proverbial headmaster arbitrarily deciding my fate? That feels more terrifying than a jury of my peers, to me.
In general through, judges have a strong bias towards the prosecution. DAs and judges are often extremely friendly since they work with each other every day. I would say that if you're innocent or your case has any extenuating circumstances, you almost always have a better shot with a jury than a judge.
Juries also allow for jury nullification, which allows for unjust laws to be ignored.
I dearly wish that jury trials were available in all cases. I recently went through a non-criminal case where justice was decidedly not served. The judge, of course, claimed he "had to follow the law" but his interpretation of the law contradicted the plain-text reading of the relevant statute. I had no choice but to suck it up unless I wanted to drop the rest of my life savings on an appeal. I feel pretty confident a jury would have seen things very differently.
The defence can ask a judge to throw out a case on the grounds that there is no evidence on which a jury could reasonably convict.
I think you're assuming quite a bit on the education, knowledge, and experience of the law on the part of the judge. There is no guarantee that the judge you get knows anything about the law pertaining to your case.
>> but their decisions have to be based in the law and either you broke a law or you haven't
And yet, judges are reversed all the time on appeal based on the idea that the judge got the law wrong.
Plus I'm fairly certain the judge has a great deal more power in the courtroom than the jury. A judge can certainly put you in jail for a period of time just because they feel like it.
But more seriously, the jury system also has serious flaws. I'd guess its bias towards existing norms. Bias against minorities in the jury pool. And its hard enough for us not accidentally trap into social media echo chambers. I doubt i'd notice attempts to personally manipulate me by a well funded defense (even without FB-like info about me). At the same time, a public defender wont have the resources to even try.
Guess "no free lunch" applies to legal systems as well. So far we haven't found an optimal system, at least.
You mean a bunch of random people who have no vested interest in the trial's outcome, and so can't be gamed or stacked for or against you in a premeditated fashion, vs. someone in a clear, long-term position of power that makes for an easy target of bribery, blackmail, or corrupt nepotism? You would seriously prefer that?
Centralization of power should generally not be preferred.
This is not how juries are formed. The parties can refuse jurors and you can refuse yourself if you are chosen.
That's not to say that judges do not exhibit such biases, but once again - they should be trained specifically against that. There is no such training or expectation on the juries. And yes, of course juries are asked "do you have any bias against this person" but I don't believe for a second that actually works.
Certainly you can introduce bias in the jury vetting process, but that's what your defense attorney is for.
Furthermore, your defense attorney has the opportunity to filter out jurors that have bias against their client. Not so for judges.
Nothing like the American system, where the lawyers can go through 250 candidates to choose 12 jurors, letting them choose the race, gender, education and class composition of the jury.
*Challenges are possible, such as if the random selection procedure wasn't followed properly or if a juror knows people involved, but it's very unusual.
They exclude jurors.
Big difference.
Each side -- depending on the state and level of court -- gets a certain number of premptory challenges; that is, they can exclude N jurors without giving a reason.
After that, the only way to exclude a juror is to prove to the Judge that the juror is biased.
One of my favorite lines about judges is: "it's the responsibility of every person to know the law, except trial judges, who simply have to consider the arguments presented and have appellate courts to set them straight"
But that is not true. An attorney will try that, while someone on a jury might not even be aware his believe in a nuclear family is used to paint the victim as a slut. Being aware of your own biases and noticing others trying to abuse them will require education and training. Random citizens won't have the time for that. A professional judge (should) take that time.
Do you take you medical advice from random citizens as well, since it is harder for the pharmacy industry to influence them? I'd want to avoid corruption. Transparency helps, but comes with its own issues... if at all possible. I do want a system that avoids centralized power as much as possible but still lets trained experts do the job. There's got to be a better balance.
So? That's what the jury selection process is for. Your defense should exclude jurors with such obvious biases.
> Do you take you medical advice from random citizens as well, since it is harder for the pharmacy industry to influence them?
Except I'm not beholden to only a single doctor. You are beholden to a single judge, and you don't get a say which judge tries you.
The system worked exactly as intended. Because jurors are paid almost no money to be there, I had a strong feeling that I didn't want to live with the guilt of sending a person to prison unless they were completely guilty and completely deserving of it.
While a judge will usually act fairly, a jury has a selfish incentive to actively look for ways to avoid sending someone to prison.
I don't think juries are a good solution everywhere. The UK does not have the remnants of racial segregation that the US does; racialism is endemic in US thought patterns. Additionally, the average person where I live is university educated. For that reason, I feel that every defendant should be given the option of a bench trial.
Btw, if you wanted to go into the free will vs formed by society thing: The reason parents tell their children to "work hard" and "be responsible for them self" is this being an effective influence. Such is necessary by society to provide for people to become better individuals. I know it sounds contradictory at first.
Meanwhile someone forced to do jury duty is gonna spend the time there whether they like it or not, so there's also no motivation to _not_ try to make good decisions. It won't save any time.
Roy Moore was a judge. Think of that. Ousted from the bench, twice, for defying court orders, ignoring the law, and displaying a lack of impartiality. This guys thinking was basically "I don't have to follow the rules, because God tells me what's right." And he was a judge for a number of years.
Now look at this video of a recent trump judicial nominee.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-zvNnFjk3Q
He couldn't even answer basic legal questions, and admits to have never tried a case in court. I believe he dropped out of the process. But others have gone on to be judges, with only slightly better credentials.
So having a judge decide is no guarantee of a fair outcome. Juries exist for a reason. They aren't perfect, and nothing ever will be.
Also seems like we have a somewhat high bar that should filter the worst people... you need a 4 year legal education and after that have an up to 5 year trial period til you got a life long position.
Except when the arbitrator has a grudge against you (maybe personally, maybe more generically - racially, ethnically, etc., maybe he just read a hit piece in the newsletter and is prejudiced against cases like yours). You can have a chance to sway the mob, but you have no chance against the professional who is out to get you.
To understand American system one has to understand that a lot of things there are designed not to produce best outcome in optimal cases, but to reduce harm in sub-optimal cases. It is meant not to solve cases with maximum ease, but to reduce the incidence of abuse. Of course, since people with power - aka the police, prosecutors judiciary, etc. - are not very interested in reducing their own powers they are actively working to undermine this design. Thus plea bargains, testilying, qualified immunity, blue wall of silence, etc.
In the vast majority of nonviolent cases I think we as a society tend to be overly punitive with the criminal justice system.
Maybe I'm making the same emotional overreaction here.
I've started to think that prosecutorial discretion is one of the main problems in Western societies. It yields all kinds of injustices, and overly vague and expansive laws that essentially result in every citizen breaking a few laws a day.
If prosecutors didn't have a choice on whether to prosecute a case, the law would ultimately be a lot more reasonable because old and unjust laws would more readily be stricken from the books, and there would be no possibility of favouritism.
I've had the idea that the current system we have, which is basically you're not breaking the law unless someone is watching, isn't going to play nice with constant surveillance.
Currently, if a law isn't enforced, it's de-facto not the law.
Just imagine if computers in people's cars were phoning home to police. How many speeding fines would be issued daily? Failure to (completely) stop at a stop sign? Reckless driving? Look at how China is currently testing the waters with shaming j-walkers[0]. Just wait until this is fully institutionalized.
[0] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-20/china-deploys-ai-camer...
It is not "Western societies", in some Roman/Civil Law countries, as an example Italy, prosecution is not discretional, it is "mandatory" for crimes (whether this is effectively enforced in the same way and everywhere is another thing).
So for law enforcement, any lies or withholding of evidence to ensure conviction would automatically mean that the penalty being asked for is applied to all of those law enforcement and prosecutors involved. There would be no "free passes" given to law enforcement or prosecutors.
This, of course, will not happen any time soon in most jurisdictions.
One problem with that is that e.g. someone who testified that they show OJ killing the woman would have gotten the "punishment the accused is facing" when OJ was found innocent.
So this has the potential to put an innocent man (testifying correctly, but where the accused for BS reasons is free of charges) to jail just as a false testimony now has the potential to do so.
I realize that distinction may seem pedantic, but I think it's actually quite relevant in this case.
It's not sufficient that someone testified about what they saw, and have the case decided the other way. To start a perjury case against the witness, I would still demand all of the strictures of due process that apply to a criminal defense case.
That is, you would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the witness was _lying_ about what they saw. It would absolutely _not_ be sufficient evidence just to have a "not guilty" ruling. You would need to prove that they _could not have seen_ the testimony they provided.
Absolutely, this standard would make _some_ prosecutions against police for perjury hard or impossible. However, there are a number of cases that I believe could meet this evidentiary standard that are simply not pursued by the prosecutors office.
A problem with this is that people giving false eyewitness testimony often believe they genuinely did see the thing they could not have seen and are telling the truth. So, a system like this would have the potential to punish as "liars" people who simply fell victim to what seem to be built-in foibles of the human memory system.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-...
https://agora.stanford.edu/sjls/Issue%20One/fisher&tversky.h...
(Note I'm not doubting that some witnesses really are consciously lying. The problem would be the potential to sweep up the innocent with the guilty, if the standard used is "what they said they saw is impossible, therefore they are lying." Additional factors showing they were consciously lying would be needed.)
The standard for perjury is not "their testimony was inaccurate, or was false". The standard for perjury is "they _knowingly_ made false testimony".
My complaint is not about changing the standard for perjury. My complaint is that prosecutors often avoid a perjury charge towards police, even when there is the evidence to support a perjury charge.
In order for anyone to be found guilty of giving false testimony the burden would be likewise. It would require that it be shown without a doubt that they lied.
Well, if the accused is considered non guilty of what they said they saw them do, then doesn't that "prove" that they lied? (as much "without a doubt" as the other person is innocent).
No. It absolutely doesn't prove that they lied. That's simply not what "not guilty" means in the criminal justice system.
Video that contradicts officers testimony.
Physical evidence that proves the testimony was a lie.
All of the above would have to be sufficiently different from reality that would suggest that its impossible to consider the possibility that the officer misremembered.
Example fake scenario:
I heard violent screaming coming from inside the home so I had to break down the door and search for the person in need of help and I just happened to find drugs.
Contradicted by video from the ring door bell which recorded the officer just walking up and kicking the door down so he could conduct an illegal search.
For real examples see the article. None of the listed scenarios suggest any reasonable party could think that the police officer misremembered.
Mark Furhman was definitely a liar and just a few months later the Rampart scandal happened.
This conflicts with the feminine imperative.
Theoretically a sound idea, but people misremember things. It is possible to give false testimony without actively lying, and difficult to prove conclusively whether someone is actively deceiving or misremembering.
Perhaps bodycam footage could be required as corroboration for officer witness testimony to carry weight.
[1]http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1477370816643734
I don't really believe those "mixed results", especially if those doing the research/reporting have ties with the police that wants those cams gone. Or where the results depend on the cooperation of the policemen wearing them during the research.
"Behind closed doors, we call it testilying," a New York City police officer, Pedro Serrano, said in a recent interview, echoing a word that officers coined at least 25 years ago. "You take the truth and stretch it out a little bit."
An officer lying under oath in order to sway a verdict calls into question every single police report or court testimony from that officer.
You're absolutely correct. This is extremely serious.
And it's extremely common.
Are there public databases that track dishonest officers? That could be incredibly helpful to defence lawyers.
Even if it may not be technically true, it's safe for the general public to assume this.
1. Are public court-records complete enough to show it?
2. Is it a judgment-call whether a given record shows it?
3. How would list-makers avoid charges of defamation?
4. How do they prevent spam?
a. link to case's public testimony (CPT)
b. text in CPT to officer's statement.
c. text in CPT that contradicts the statement.
2. Innocent until proven guilty? I'd say best to start with the clear lies first to build the list's credibility. However enough borderline cases surrounding an individual or department can also be interesting.
3. Defamation requires that the statements about the person be false. Referencing court docs about what they said should obviate that concern. Maybe the trick is to bill the db as a "list of inconsistencies" rather than outright lies.
4. I'd be more concerned about DoS attack rather than spam.
I had in mind a service where people were allowed to write in their claims of testilying -- how do you prevent it being "spammed" by every criminal with a grudge against a cop.
By asking them to cut and paste text from CPT -- which can then be electronically verified, you can cut down on the casual attempts. Of course a real attacker can get around that trivially.
Another question is where to host it. While truth is a libel defence in the US -- I am not sure that is true in other countries.
"Sorry I won't speak to you without my lawyer present."
(Going off of memory, so forgive me if the quote isn't exactly correct.)
Perjury can remain the term for the crime in general, and testilying can refer to the specific form of police officers systematically perjuring themselves for corrupt or otherwise dubious purposes.
Standards for comedy were much lower in the mid-'90s. [3]
[1] UK slang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyride_(crime)
[2] UK actual crime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievous_bodily_harm
It should have an outsized punishment.
In my justice fantasies some smart ass company comes along to "help" the police by providing them with vests each containing 60 cameras all operating independently and unable to be turned off. The same company will "help" the police avoid complicated data maintenance issues by uploading to their secure servers. This same company would be very popular with the voting public who vote for laws that ensure police accept the "help". Just a fantasy for sure.
It's a very serious charge to attempt any sort of violence against a Law Enforcement Officer (LEO), and at least where I'm from, prosecutors like giving the max sentence for cases such as those.
I feel if we could make the number of times an officer was found to testify to something that was shown to be a lie, was submittable as evidence in rebuttal to all of their testimony, it would quickly make bad officers unable to participate in the justice system.
I would hope that an officer that cannot make arrests because their testimony will always be stained in court will find themselves out of a job.
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-sheriff-brady-list-201712...
"California is among 22 states that keep officer discipline from the public, but it is the only one that blocks prosecutors from seeing entire police personnel files."
Their actions are counterproductive to the preservation of an integrated, fair civil society.
1. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-announces-...
2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/01/10/...
To a large extent, issues posed in this thread could be solved with body cams. When all police are held more accountable in this way, are your grievances eased at all?
How would you suppose a government bring about such a large upheaval when most modern politics spends its time on compromise and incremental change?
The system is fundamentally broken. The incentive structure needs to be changed. This is a sociopolitical issue.
I do think that technology like this will be less and less corruptible over time though - I am fairly optimistic about this use case for cameras (but also have concerns about how unpleasant jobs like teaching and policing could become if people are monitored in an authoritarian way).
In terms of the system being fundamentally broken, my view is that 'ripping it out and starting again' is just not viable (esp with the US having essentially a 2 party system) - Incremental change such as introducing body cams, reducing its corruptibility, and general 'liberal' policy introduction over time is the only feasible path if relying on traditional government.
This incremental change, however, is far too slow, which is why I support Ethical Capitalism to provide an alternative path, guided by 'enlightened' public demand. Which brings its own problems and exploitable weaknesses of course.
>How often do you see headlines where the police commit outrageous atrocities and get a slap on the wrist?
I am fairly optimistic too in this regard - People are slowly wising up to Police perjury and other indiscretions, and it is more at the forefront of people's minds than ever before. I have no justification for this optimism in this conversation though unfortunately, as it is such a large nuanced shift to examine.
No, because then they pull this nonsense[1]. They are an institution historically grounded in anti-labor terrorism and slave catching, crafted entirely to elevate the security of private property above all other societal concerns.
>(Is Sessions a White Supremacist, or protectionist and somewhere on the nationalistic scale?
You should reconsider your hesitance here. Intellectuals need to stop tapdancing around the issue of white supremacy, and call a spade a spade. He prosecuted a group of people that were helping African-Americans register to vote. He's pushed back time and time again against sentencing reform that would treat people more equally under the law.[2] Calling his actions "protectionist" or "nationalist" is explicitly excluding black citizens from The Nation in question. By attempting to misdirect and misattribute these actions you are complicit in the practices that sustain the root from which his hateful policies grow.
1. http://fortune.com/2018/03/19/uber-self-driving-car-crash/
2. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/can-a-new-cri...
>You should reconsider your hesitance here. Intellectuals need to stop tapdancing around the issue of white supremacy, and call a spade a spade.
I am not a US citizen and don't know anything about this person, so I stand by my position on being unqualified to say (hence asking). Actually on a side note, I agree with you, but on the other hand am equally concerned about the 'level platform' (e.g. 'my opinion is as valid as your scientific method') that we currently have in society.
Having said the above - Yes, I am a hesitant debater in general, so for other circumstances, I agree.
>http://fortune.com/2018/03/19/uber-self-driving-car-crash/
The reference you provided seems a little tenuous to this to me FYI (and is also a single data point). That flippant comment from a single police force regarding a corporation does somewhat reflect the power of companies at the moment, but I am not sure whether it shows anything more than this. Side note, the police also said along the lines of "we will not rule out prosecuting the driver" (paraphrasing) which strikes me as terrifying, as the driver was arguably avoiding negligence as much as possible, while Uber could be considered grossly negligent here.
>They are an institution historically grounded in anti-labor terrorism and slave catching, crafted entirely to elevate the security of private property above all other societal concerns.
To play devil's advocate here, so were the Dutch[1], Swedish[2] governments etc.) - Which are among the more democratically represented countries we have at the moment (no where near a pure democracy, but still some of the best we have). These nations now have comparatively liberal prison and policing systems.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Slave_Coast [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_slave_trade
Even so, I received the stiffest possible penalty, 6mos jail and thousands in fees. The judge said his conviction was based on the fact that he "thought I was lying".
My life has been severely impacted by this wrongful conviction.
This issue runs deeper than lying police. When the DA and court system are in on it too, there is no hope.
And just to be clear, my mother is a retired police officer, married to another retired police officers, so I have met my share of police officers, and all the ones I have met were decent people who valued honesty highly. But that makes the fact the police as a whole is willing to tolerate such behavior all the more troubling.
It's the same for judges taking bribes. If you can't trust the legal system then a democratic state can't work properly.
I have no doubt there are good cops. But the nature of the job makes it appealing to a certain audience.
The more power a job holds, the higher a standard of conduct necessary and the higher the punishment and enforcement for abuse should be.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130...
That is, they are instructed to testilie.
Very much largely?
Now, without wanting to cast aspersions on a prosecutor, is this guy lying about lying?
If you look at the next 25 years, not only will every cop have a camera running 24/7, but also all vehicle's including the suspect's will be recording events from multiple angles.
Most homes will have cameras at the front door, and throughout the home in some form or another.
Many witnessneses are already recording things through their phones.
People may be wearing augmented reality style "google glasses" that can retroactively record important moments. Meaning they won't even intend to record the things that they do.
Right now its possible for the police to intimidate someone who pulls out a phone and starts recording, but soon there will be just too many devices, and it will be impossible to tell what is recording.
And drones... Traffic and delivery drones, can easily be rerouted during police incidents to provide overhead video feeds that help the officer, or help the court determine what happened at a later date.
Until there is a culture of routine and serious consequences for police lying in court, police will continue to lie in court.
That is - deep learning NN generated aerial drone footage (or altered footage) - could certainly be done...
I'm not sure where this ends...
Also if a police department wanted to undertake a full on conspiracy to fabricate evidence, their will be so many cameras from so many angles, that there lies would quickly be outed.
For now.
They stole money, then they filmed themselves afterwards (re)discovering the (now reduced) money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
Thanks to user turc1656 for re-posting it, can't stress enough how relevant this is.
I'm not sure why the police protect each other when there is wrongdoing. When that stuff eventually comes to light it reflects badly on the entire group. Sure, we can tell people it's just a few bad apples, but that doesn't really hold up when the group continues to support bad apples. They're being complicit.
http://news.gallup.com/poll/196610/americans-respect-police-...
Many are terrified of any interaction with the police.
The remaining Americans are criminals and therfore hold opinions which do not matter to the rest of the country.
Especially in Germany the the police (not 'law enforcement') is held to a much higher standard.
Police are quite respected, and not feared by anyone here.
Justice system is not about punishment, but about providing as low level as possible downside to illegal actions. So it's set up more like a statistical tool than like a personal punishment scheme.
Yes, small country, homogenous culture, etc.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Turku_stabbing
Edit: I have to add, that while the general standards seem to be quite high, individual officers are not incorruptible. A head of drug enforcement was recently jailed for basically corruption. But the fact that anyone can be deposed if found wanting is perhaps a signal about the self repair in the system - individuals are corruptible, but the system and norms aren't. At least for the moment. Yes, a single officer might lie if bucketloads of euros are at stake, but a random officer would generally not lie for leisure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jari_Aarnio
When I ask people why they are so consumed with carrying guns, they say its to protect them and their loved ones. I then show them statistically, that gun deaths are the 50th leading cause of death in the US they believe the statistic but being a victim of a violent crime is such a visceral emotion by some people.
Catch them in one lie, and you get off scot free. Source: been dealing with the "justice" system since I was 17, most recently last year where I recorded an agent of the court committing perjury.
Yes, nothing happens to them but most importantly, they've never been able to convict me of anything.
even better, stop talking to them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
> Catch them in one lie, and you get off scot free.
they're not leprechauns, there are no magical rules in effect.
1) once a police officer submits or makes a knowingly false statement that results in your prosecution, exposing this taints all cases where that officer was involved which could result in retrials or dismissals. The da absolutely does not want to be responsible for this. They will drop the charges once your lawyer takes them aside after the statement has been made. Note: do not give your lawyer this evidence until the perjury has occurred. They may not be happy with you and inform the DA thus cutting you off at the knees (it's pretty incestuous at times.) Play dumb and outraged that this is happening to you.
2) a finding of perjury is rare, you're after dismissing the charges
3) nothing will happen to that officer but you may end up being considered hostile in that precinct.
No doubt about it, they are the enemy when it comes to finding a scapegoat and they do it with your tax dollars.
Edit: I'm unable to respond, apparently I'm commenting too much for the last hour so my response is here:
Think about this regarding not trusting your own lawyer: if the case gets dropped, the attorney makes no more in fees. If that evidence is neutered, it needs to go to trial. Trust no one. I'm a very hard looking guy (hard life but I'm really quite soft) and most people think I'm guilty of everything. Add that I am not white, don't look rich, and it's a recipe for distrust on sight. Even when faced with evidence, I've had people continue to lie as if admitting that I'm innocent would cause a tear in the fabric of the universe.
Seriously? Are these public prosecutors, or ones you pay good money for? Is it that the defenders think you are guilty but are going through the motions of a pretend defense? Either way it is a scary thought.
In general I thought you would want your lawyer to know as much as possible so that they have as many options as possible for constructing an arugment for you in court. If you have to second guess that, then you are in a bit of a lose-lose situation with every piece of info.
Think about this regarding not trusting your own lawyer: if the case gets dropped, the attorney makes no more in fees. If that evidence is neutered, it needs to go to trial. Trust no one. I'm a very hard looking guy (hard life but I'm really quite soft) and most people think I'm guilty of everything. Add that I am not white, don't look rich, and it's a recipe for distrust on sight. Even when faced with evidence, I've had people continue to lie as if admitting that I'm innocent would cause a tear in the fabric of the universe.
This is mostly not true for most people, especially if you are not-poor, white, and not actually committing major crimes. OTOH, the times when it is true aren't easily distinguishable from the times that it isn't true, which means you have an interest in treating it as more true than it actually is.
I am objecting to the “100%” characterization, and pointing out that reality is much more complex than that.
Edit: It doesn't matter if I'm not statistically correct, the question is whether you would take the risk that, no, they're not out to get you if they're questioning you for something serious... Seems a bad calculation.
But, you know, different circumstances—or even different questions—and it might have gone differently.
When is perjury not transcribed anyway?
"I must have misremembered" "Oh ok"
Perjury is a joke, it's something that is used against citizens not against police officers or the like.
In any case, you have to prove that someone wilfully told an untruth. That's tough.
This is a simple change that would, overnight, completely flip the calculus of police who literally get away with murder.
That lets every person arrested charge the police with something criminal, and have it taken seriously, no matter how bogus the charge.
What? You thought the police practice "testilying", but the criminals don't?
Now, true, some such accusations need to be taken more seriously. Not all of them, though. The prosecutors err too often on the side of the police. Erring too much on the side of the accusers is not the answer, though.
No, it doesn't. An independent special prosecutor can brush off an allegation as not credible as easily as a police-aligned prosecutor; in principle, they won't be biased by their other prosecutions depending on the police, but they don't somehow lose the capacity for judgement along with that source of bias.
Fixing problems means making qualitative changes to how the broken processes work.
I think there's a pretty wide range of options between "let the DA who needs the cops to lie so he can keep his conviction rate high half-ass his way though the case" and "bring charges literally every time someone wants to bring charges." I think OP was talking more about WHO handles them, rather than whether all of them have merit.
I agree with you that if you have a different district/office handling this sort of stuff. But it always comes down to Who's Watching the Watchmen. Checks and balances are hard AF.
There's a reason why there are more former prosecutors on the bench than former defense attorneys.
Judges don't make laws (well, at least, they aren't the ones I'm talking about with a jurisdiction-wide, state or federal, prohibition.)
Now, if you want to say that it's not easy to control because legislators and ultimately the electorate are biased toward and support this kind of police intimidation, that may be the case (though that's exactly saying it's not easy to solve because we, as a society, actively desire the status quo. It's easy to solve, it's hard to convince people it should be solved, which has always been the problem with civil liberties.)
The fact that they've pissed off the cops may or may not factor into it. Not saying you're wrong, just that it's not quite THAT simple.
There is an inherent conflict of interest in having the person responsible for investigating crimes be someone who needs to work closely with the people and organizations who allegedly committed the crimes.
The deeper problem is that juries do not convict police officers for this sort of thing, which is one of the reasons that prosecutors decline to charge officers. While a "special prosecutor" might result in a more enthusiastic prosecution, without the risk of damaging the relationship of the district attorney with the police force.
I don't think a law like this would be a panacea, or would even meaningfully impact the problem.
"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." -- Anatole France
Having a special prosecutor handle police misconduct cases, instead of the DA, does not in any way preclude the right to a jury. These cases would still go to trial like any other. The difference here is that the incentives would be flipped: DAs are incentivized to go as soft as possible on cops- either by instructing the grand jury not to indict or presenting the weakest case possible at the actual trial, because if they don't it harms their ability to work with the police for regular cases. Special prosecutors would not have that issue.
> I don't think a law like this would be a panacea, or would even meaningfully impact the problem.
I'm not claiming it's a silver bullet. But it would help, if only because cops would then know that they don't automatically have a friend in the prosecutor if they break the law. And unlike a lot of the other steps that need to be taken to fix the American justice system, this one could be done instantly just by passing a law.
0: https://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/archives/2018/03/16...
Right now they commit perjury and get promoted, things will only change when they start losing their jobs and pensions.
Making it easy and profitable to take clear-cut cases like this to civil court adds incentives to go after these sorts of things.
But most police are honest. They work a dangerous job, at low pay, and with a mostly ungrateful public. These days, they are a political football with a powerful press working against them.
I'm glad cops are there. It'll be a bad day when the 'Ferguson effect' becomes amplified.
How many innocents convicted, due to institutionalized, consequence-free perjury, is too many?
If you think 25 out of 100,000 isn't "that pervasive a problem", thank your lucky stars you're not one of those 25.