"People die because of this stuff,” said John Burton, a California lawyer who specializes in police misconduct cases. “When they give these cops a pass, it just ripples through the system.”
I'm curious what people think of this ... does defending the police even under pretty damning situations really equate to being responsible for future death?
"Defending" in the sense of publicly arguing that the accused officers are innocent is your basic right in a free society. I don't think this sort of speech results in responsibility for future deaths. It doesn't seem very rational for a potential murderer to be encouraged to commit the crime by the knowledge that there are some people out there who will argue that he is innocent. After all, there are lots of examples of people who end up behind bars despite having a large number of supporters.
"Defending" in the sense of presenting pseudo-scientific testimony that sways a jury is IMHO perverting justice. Moreover, it shows potential murderers exactly how they too can get away with it, so there is a fair argument that such testimony does result in future deaths.
I've lived in a number of different cities, some of them overseas, and I've seen an enormous difference in police culture. Even in the US, I've lived places where cops believe they are basically immune from criticism and some mistreat citizens as a result. One country I lived in it was just understood that you should flee the scene of an accident rather than risk cops having power over you.
Good recent US examples include the shooting of Samuel Dubose and the death of Freddie Gray. There cops clearly expected to literally get away with murder.
In some ways this shouldn't be a surprise; the whole theory of our criminal justice system is that crime is reduced if transgressors are caught and punished. So if there are sorts of crime where perpetrators are unlikely to be caught, we should at least expect more future crime. And it's reasonable to sometimes expect cultures of criminality to take root as a result.