One of the things most needed in this country is a law that criminalizes lying on a police report. Lie on police report you get five years, conspire with other cops to lie on a police report (lets get our stories right boys) another 5. I’ll vote for Jack the Ripper if he promises such law, might even vote for Trump if he wasn’t so inept.
If you’re a police officer. I know this sounds weird, but I’m at least a little OK with victims, witnesses and alleged perpetrators saying things to police that aren’t entirely factual. We want to hold police to a higher standard.
Also, I am usually vehemently against hoping that additional bad things happen to a convicted person in prison, but this is a hard case for that principle.
This is a long row to hoe. Here in St, Louis the new city prosecutor has declined to press charges in cases where 20 City of St. Louis have made arrests. It’s causing quite a stir, but her reasoning is that this group of officers have routinely lied on police reports and some were involved in a dangerous crowd control tactic called kettling. The city police kettled a group of protesters, residents, and one undercover police officer after the verdict to convict a police officer in the killing a black suspect. The protesters had left the protest area, were walking back to their cars/homes, when the police cordoned into the middle of an intersection and started handcuffing and roughing detainees. Three or more officers handcuffed an St. City officer that was working undercover and beat him severely. The officers arrested residents of that live in the area and came out to see what was happening, the arrested restaurant patrons that had stepped outside to have a smoke, and the roughed them all up after they had them cuffed and sitting on the ground.
So if you’re a police officer that was involved with this situation and make other arrests in following years can their testimony be considered reliable in other cases, when if was proven that they used unnecessary force?
Not sure about this — why not hold both witnesses AND police officers to a standard of . . . telling the truth? The Chicago cops who blatantly lied about McDonald’s actions in their reports should have gone to jail, and the witnesses in Ferguson who blatantly lied about the officer’s actions should have gone to jail. High standards should not be mutually exclusive.
Well, according to the judges, nobody lied. They just had a “different perspective than the camera”.
CPD and its union are corrupt. And they corrupt judges who rely on police for their own security. Also, police officers use their position to run for local political office. And become Ed Burke.
Yes, the new legislation criminalizing lying by police could help judges a bit, but it’s a fig leaf. You see, the CPD union has told us publicly on more than one occasion that no one involved in murdering McDonald (allegedly) or covering up McDonald’s murder (allegedly) is guilty of anything. They were simply doing their job. Yes, our collective jaw is hurting from dropping over and over on the floor.
Meanwhile, if you go to any local political action committee, the union people will be there shutting down any conversation. Unless you’re not worried about your own security.
Oh and CPD rates of solving crime? 16% of murders are solved. I wonder sometimes if we wouldn’t be better off with no cops on the street.
CPD is nothing else but our own local Trump. And they’ve been there, intrenched for years.
Poor decent cops. Who have to live and work in that corrupt institution.
Because of prosecutorial discretion. It would be way too easy for someone who made a mistake or who initially shaded things according to what they wanted to believe to end up in jail. Indeed, it’s already way too easy for that to happen
Oh, I agree that there should be discretion. But saying someone attacked an officer when it didn’t happen at all is not shading the truth or misremembering. Saying someone was shot in the back while on their knees surrendering when nothing of the kind happened is not shading or misremembering. Those are blatant lies. In these cases, prosecutorial discretion should strongly favor prosecution.