5 ms·

>People accused of crimes deserve to know if the officers involved in their arrest have a history of lying; judges, too, deserve to know how credible police wit

>People accused of crimes deserve to know if the officers involved in their arrest have a history of lying; judges, too, deserve to know how credible police witnesses are in their cases. This seems like a pretty bizarre framing. A police officer with a history of filing fraudulent reports or committing perjury should not still be a police officer.

eviks 3y ago
That's too radical!
drdec 3y ago
I think the idea is to solve the problem you can solve. Getting police fired is much more difficult than getting information shared.
FFP999 3y ago
At the very minimum they should not be a cop. Better still would be if we considered this a serious felony and a cop who did this was liable to trade in their blue uniform for an orange one. I doubt this will happen in my lifetime.
failTide 3y ago
Agreed - but if they're no longer able to effectively testify in court, they'd presumably no longer be able to do real police work - at best they'd be put in some administrative duty.
drewcoo 3y ago
> A police officer with a history of filing fraudulent reports or committing perjury should not still be a police officer. But they're paying union members, too!
phatskat 3y ago
I mean, you can murder, rape, steal, lie, and more with a badge. If you want accountability, you have to get rid of the unions
- notatoad 3y ago
  the unions are only another symptom of the problem: if you get rid of all the bad cops, you don't have enough workers left to do all the work we currently assign to police. bad cops don't keep their jobs because they have a powerful union, they keep their jobs because the demand for police officers is so high. and that's the same reason the union has so much power. if you want accountability, reduce the number of policing jobs to some number lower than the number of people who want to be police.
  - r00fus 3y ago
    Police unions are definitely part of the blue omerta. But the most important factor you didn’t raise is the increasing corporate funding of police [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/18/police-foundations-nonprofits-amazon-target-microsoft https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/18/police-found...
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    > if you get rid of all the bad cops, you don't have enough workers left to do all the work we currently assign to police maybe, maybe not you would definitely open up the profession to all the people who consider themselves honest, and thus who have avoided a career in policing, which is rife in corruption, rewards corruption, and penalizes honesty and let's be honest, it pays a TON for what isn't even close to one of the most dangerous professions, so neither pay nor danger are what keeps smart, honest people away currently, most such people would avoid it because of the culture (particularly the culture of corruption), and bad police don't want and, indeed, deter such people from joining their ranks > bad cops don't keep their jobs because they have a powerful union almost universally, they do: the union literally prevents firing most bad police officers
  - phatskat 3y ago
    Remember the Defund the Police thing? Turns out that places that diverted money to non-police alternatives for things like mental health calls have been doing well so far. So, get rid of the bad cops and give that money to people who can help without a gun.
bannedbybros 3y ago
[dead]
sneak 3y ago
Lying under oath is a crime; it should be harshly punished when carried out as part of a conspiracy of supposedly trustworthy officials.
- pmoriarty 3y ago
  People who are part of the legal system should be held to an even higher standard, as their lying undermines trust in the system itself. As such, their punishment should be even harsher, and tolerance for their lies should be even lower.
  - sneak 3y ago
    I agree. What's the first step toward implementing this system? What actions can be taken to get to that from where we are? The police are not going to arrest the police. The DAs are not going to prosecute the police (who they generally regard as the "same team"). The system as designed and currently operating is broken and intentionally unfair and unjust. How do we go about replacing or fixing it?
    - cassepipe 3y ago
      Checks and balances. You create a strong independent body whose sole purpose is to investigate the legality of police action
      - qingcharles 3y ago
        Chicago has tried this again, and again, and again. They keep dissolving each body when it fails to prosecute any officers and start a new one, which does the same. Almost every employee ends up being related to the police or SA and none of them want to find anything wrong. This is only the right solution on paper. Not in reality, sadly.
    - novok 3y ago
      It might have to be a federal or state system that prosecutes this kind of stuff in the end, because the local system wont do it. Put the DAs, the police and maybe the judges on the hook. And the federal people who would do this (FBI maybe?) would have to be completely disconnected from the local police / judge organizations, probably on rotations like a foreign diplomat service. The key is they have to be completely different career systems, where they don't fraternize or socialize with each other, and you'd probably have to make it somewhat antagonistic culturally so they don't end up doing something similar. Which is why it has to be a different organization. Internal affairs is a systematic failure probably because it's within the same organizational tree as everyone else. It's really hard to incentivize people to do the 'right thing' when the incentives make it career suicide to do the right thing because you'll become a dangerous pariah as soon as you do. Also to start I'd start with actions in court / evidence, not in the field until that organization starts running out of those actions to enforce because they've installed enough fear in the police system. That way the police can never have the cultural excuse to do their crap because 'their life is in risk and it's a split second decision' because your lying on boring safe paperwork and court where you have plenty of time to think about your actions, and over %50 of this will probably be lawyers actions too. What is the first steps? Probably allying in blue states with anti-police movements and working with them in lobbying for a state enforcement arm that enforces specifically against unjust plea deals, testilying, withholding exculpatory evidence and focusing on prosecutors with out of the norm high conviction rates first. You'd also have to make it pay as well as private, which will also be hard. A wealthy state like california can fund such a thing, and it would probably be small, like 40 lawyers & their support staff, and be crazy effective. Unjust plea deals will probably be last politically if it is at all possible because the system will scream about it will screech to a halt and to address that is a much bigger issue.
tehwebguy 3y ago
All it takes is for the district attorney (who thankfully is the person most familiar with the amount of lies each officer tells) to prosecute them for perjury. It’s just a misdemeanor in many states so the DA can indict them without a grand jury! This is important because DAs use felony charges to pardon cops and launder it through a grand jury (we all remember the Buffalo NY cops that pushed the 75 year old man to the ground and left him bleeding from the head — cops charged with felony but GJ refused to indict, it can’t be proved but it’s obvious the DA sandbagged it). But DAs almost never charge cops with anything, even the so-called progressive ones in the bluest states files a few token indictments against the a few token cops and then went back to business as usual. If police are actually subject to the same system as the rest of us it will work, but DAs have pretty much always refused to do it.
- Ms-J 3y ago
  Absolutely. It district attorney's started prosecuting cops, the system would crumble and come to a fast halt. There is no credibility in court and the charade continues.
- poulsbohemian 3y ago
  I hate to say it this way, but it’s our own darn fault as voters… imagine a DA (or a local elected prosecuting attorney…) does that. If they stay in their current role, now the police become hostile and unwilling to work with them. Now let’s say they want to run for higher office / get reelected. Police union comes after them, opponent calls them soft-on-crime and anti-police. The general public doesn’t have the energy to actually follow the chain of issues or understand the situation, but they do respond to sound bytes. Often, the media can’t understand the situation well enough themselves, so even in the event you still have a local news source, they are unlikely to report in a way that the public understands what’s really happening. And - the press may not want to anger the police either, as they want the inside story. So… the wheel keeps on turning.
  - Ms-J 3y ago
    This cycle could be fixed in a few ways. One would be if a few citizens' invested some energy into creating an interesting video/sound clip of what's really happening in court and the news picks up on that. Or it spreads via social media like TikTok. It seems that quite a few people are interested in cops or court drama, and this could demystify the situation and show it for what it really is.
gabereiser 3y ago
The issue is, the officer helps the prosecutor. Who is going to prosecute you if you’re helping the prosecution? It’s a case of turning a blind eye because it suits the state. I’m in total agreement though that if a police officer is found to have lied under oath, in statement, or report - they’re done. Same as one who discharges their firearm outside of a hostage/terrorist/school-shooting. Gunning down civilians, whatever their crime, is murder. Shooting someone because they are running and you can’t run fast - is murder.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
  You realize the police sometimes have to shoot at people who are trying to murder them? Violent criminals deserve to have their threat capacity neutralized in the most effective way possible. If it can't be done with non-injurious force then so be it.
  - gabereiser 3y ago
    You realize they don't have to shoot at people. The issue is the US's obsession with guns. Other countries do this without firearms successfully.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    There are some few cases where it's reasonable for the police to shoot someone. But when they all have guns and no training for de-escalation or sound rules of engagement, they end up shooting rather a lot of people who aren't even trying to murder them, let alone likely to succeed.
scotty79 3y ago
> A police officer with a history of filing fraudulent reports or committing perjury should not still be a police officer. Should be convict or ex-convict.
qingcharles 3y ago
I ran the background on an officer in a case against me. He had been found guilty in an internal investigation of badly beating an unarmed Mexican man. In his sworn statement he said the guy had run in front of his car. This didn't match the testimony of six different witnesses who all saw the incident. The report found him guilty of the beating and noted his testilying. I think he was given a few days suspension for this. No criminal charges, obviously. In another case, I told a friend to investigate the background of the lead detective against him. When we ran his file we found he had already been fired from the police department for using the computer system to change the upcoming court dates for another officer so he would miss court and not testify against a friend of the detective who had been pulled over for a suspected DUI.
- WirelessGigabit 3y ago
  Can you bring that to the trial when you go in front of a jury to make the jury doubt the police's testimony?
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    Usually, yes. You might want to make a motion in limine to the court before trial to let them know you plan to do it and to get the court's approval. This will also put the prosecutor on notice and might stop them from using the witness altogether. I always use FOIA to access the police department records during pre-trial for defendants. The prosecutors are supposed to supply useful information like this to the defense, but I've never known it to happen without some prodding.

eviks 3y ago

That's too radical!

drdec 3y ago

I think the idea is to solve the problem you can solve. Getting police fired is much more difficult than getting information shared.

FFP999 3y ago

At the very minimum they should not be a cop. Better still would be if we considered this a serious felony and a cop who did this was liable to trade in their blue uniform for an orange one. I doubt this will happen in my lifetime.

failTide 3y ago

Agreed - but if they're no longer able to effectively testify in court, they'd presumably no longer be able to do real police work - at best they'd be put in some administrative duty.

drewcoo 3y ago

> A police officer with a history of filing fraudulent reports or committing perjury should not still be a police officer. But they're paying union members, too!

phatskat 3y ago

I mean, you can murder, rape, steal, lie, and more with a badge. If you want accountability, you have to get rid of the unions

notatoad 3y ago
the unions are only another symptom of the problem: if you get rid of all the bad cops, you don't have enough workers left to do all the work we currently assign to police. bad cops don't keep their jobs because they have a powerful union, they keep their jobs because the demand for police officers is so high. and that's the same reason the union has so much power. if you want accountability, reduce the number of policing jobs to some number lower than the number of people who want to be police.
- r00fus 3y ago
  Police unions are definitely part of the blue omerta. But the most important factor you didn’t raise is the increasing corporate funding of police [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/18/police-foundations-nonprofits-amazon-target-microsoft https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/18/police-found...
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  > if you get rid of all the bad cops, you don't have enough workers left to do all the work we currently assign to police maybe, maybe not you would definitely open up the profession to all the people who consider themselves honest, and thus who have avoided a career in policing, which is rife in corruption, rewards corruption, and penalizes honesty and let's be honest, it pays a TON for what isn't even close to one of the most dangerous professions, so neither pay nor danger are what keeps smart, honest people away currently, most such people would avoid it because of the culture (particularly the culture of corruption), and bad police don't want and, indeed, deter such people from joining their ranks > bad cops don't keep their jobs because they have a powerful union almost universally, they do: the union literally prevents firing most bad police officers
- phatskat 3y ago
  Remember the Defund the Police thing? Turns out that places that diverted money to non-police alternatives for things like mental health calls have been doing well so far. So, get rid of the bad cops and give that money to people who can help without a gun.

bannedbybros 3y ago

[dead]

sneak 3y ago

Lying under oath is a crime; it should be harshly punished when carried out as part of a conspiracy of supposedly trustworthy officials.

pmoriarty 3y ago
People who are part of the legal system should be held to an even higher standard, as their lying undermines trust in the system itself. As such, their punishment should be even harsher, and tolerance for their lies should be even lower.
- sneak 3y ago
  I agree. What's the first step toward implementing this system? What actions can be taken to get to that from where we are? The police are not going to arrest the police. The DAs are not going to prosecute the police (who they generally regard as the "same team"). The system as designed and currently operating is broken and intentionally unfair and unjust. How do we go about replacing or fixing it?
  - cassepipe 3y ago
    Checks and balances. You create a strong independent body whose sole purpose is to investigate the legality of police action
    - qingcharles 3y ago
      Chicago has tried this again, and again, and again. They keep dissolving each body when it fails to prosecute any officers and start a new one, which does the same. Almost every employee ends up being related to the police or SA and none of them want to find anything wrong. This is only the right solution on paper. Not in reality, sadly.
  - novok 3y ago
    It might have to be a federal or state system that prosecutes this kind of stuff in the end, because the local system wont do it. Put the DAs, the police and maybe the judges on the hook. And the federal people who would do this (FBI maybe?) would have to be completely disconnected from the local police / judge organizations, probably on rotations like a foreign diplomat service. The key is they have to be completely different career systems, where they don't fraternize or socialize with each other, and you'd probably have to make it somewhat antagonistic culturally so they don't end up doing something similar. Which is why it has to be a different organization. Internal affairs is a systematic failure probably because it's within the same organizational tree as everyone else. It's really hard to incentivize people to do the 'right thing' when the incentives make it career suicide to do the right thing because you'll become a dangerous pariah as soon as you do. Also to start I'd start with actions in court / evidence, not in the field until that organization starts running out of those actions to enforce because they've installed enough fear in the police system. That way the police can never have the cultural excuse to do their crap because 'their life is in risk and it's a split second decision' because your lying on boring safe paperwork and court where you have plenty of time to think about your actions, and over %50 of this will probably be lawyers actions too. What is the first steps? Probably allying in blue states with anti-police movements and working with them in lobbying for a state enforcement arm that enforces specifically against unjust plea deals, testilying, withholding exculpatory evidence and focusing on prosecutors with out of the norm high conviction rates first. You'd also have to make it pay as well as private, which will also be hard. A wealthy state like california can fund such a thing, and it would probably be small, like 40 lawyers & their support staff, and be crazy effective. Unjust plea deals will probably be last politically if it is at all possible because the system will scream about it will screech to a halt and to address that is a much bigger issue.

tehwebguy 3y ago

All it takes is for the district attorney (who thankfully is the person most familiar with the amount of lies each officer tells) to prosecute them for perjury. It’s just a misdemeanor in many states so the DA can indict them without a grand jury! This is important because DAs use felony charges to pardon cops and launder it through a grand jury (we all remember the Buffalo NY cops that pushed the 75 year old man to the ground and left him bleeding from the head — cops charged with felony but GJ refused to indict, it can’t be proved but it’s obvious the DA sandbagged it). But DAs almost never charge cops with anything, even the so-called progressive ones in the bluest states files a few token indictments against the a few token cops and then went back to business as usual. If police are actually subject to the same system as the rest of us it will work, but DAs have pretty much always refused to do it.

Ms-J 3y ago
Absolutely. It district attorney's started prosecuting cops, the system would crumble and come to a fast halt. There is no credibility in court and the charade continues.
poulsbohemian 3y ago
I hate to say it this way, but it’s our own darn fault as voters… imagine a DA (or a local elected prosecuting attorney…) does that. If they stay in their current role, now the police become hostile and unwilling to work with them. Now let’s say they want to run for higher office / get reelected. Police union comes after them, opponent calls them soft-on-crime and anti-police. The general public doesn’t have the energy to actually follow the chain of issues or understand the situation, but they do respond to sound bytes. Often, the media can’t understand the situation well enough themselves, so even in the event you still have a local news source, they are unlikely to report in a way that the public understands what’s really happening. And - the press may not want to anger the police either, as they want the inside story. So… the wheel keeps on turning.
- Ms-J 3y ago
  This cycle could be fixed in a few ways. One would be if a few citizens' invested some energy into creating an interesting video/sound clip of what's really happening in court and the news picks up on that. Or it spreads via social media like TikTok. It seems that quite a few people are interested in cops or court drama, and this could demystify the situation and show it for what it really is.

gabereiser 3y ago

The issue is, the officer helps the prosecutor. Who is going to prosecute you if you’re helping the prosecution? It’s a case of turning a blind eye because it suits the state. I’m in total agreement though that if a police officer is found to have lied under oath, in statement, or report - they’re done. Same as one who discharges their firearm outside of a hostage/terrorist/school-shooting. Gunning down civilians, whatever their crime, is murder. Shooting someone because they are running and you can’t run fast - is murder.

kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
You realize the police sometimes have to shoot at people who are trying to murder them? Violent criminals deserve to have their threat capacity neutralized in the most effective way possible. If it can't be done with non-injurious force then so be it.
- gabereiser 3y ago
  You realize they don't have to shoot at people. The issue is the US's obsession with guns. Other countries do this without firearms successfully.
- thfuran 3y ago
  There are some few cases where it's reasonable for the police to shoot someone. But when they all have guns and no training for de-escalation or sound rules of engagement, they end up shooting rather a lot of people who aren't even trying to murder them, let alone likely to succeed.

scotty79 3y ago

> A police officer with a history of filing fraudulent reports or committing perjury should not still be a police officer. Should be convict or ex-convict.

qingcharles 3y ago

I ran the background on an officer in a case against me. He had been found guilty in an internal investigation of badly beating an unarmed Mexican man. In his sworn statement he said the guy had run in front of his car. This didn't match the testimony of six different witnesses who all saw the incident. The report found him guilty of the beating and noted his testilying. I think he was given a few days suspension for this. No criminal charges, obviously. In another case, I told a friend to investigate the background of the lead detective against him. When we ran his file we found he had already been fired from the police department for using the computer system to change the upcoming court dates for another officer so he would miss court and not testify against a friend of the detective who had been pulled over for a suspected DUI.

WirelessGigabit 3y ago
Can you bring that to the trial when you go in front of a jury to make the jury doubt the police's testimony?
- qingcharles 3y ago
  Usually, yes. You might want to make a motion in limine to the court before trial to let them know you plan to do it and to get the court's approval. This will also put the prosecutor on notice and might stop them from using the witness altogether. I always use FOIA to access the police department records during pre-trial for defendants. The prosecutors are supposed to supply useful information like this to the defense, but I've never known it to happen without some prodding.