11 ms·

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.

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.
- saghm 3y ago
  So the police unions dominate the conversation to the point where they drown out all other points of view, and the press might help them, and this is our fault as voters...how? It's not like there are tons of obviously tough on police prosecutors running either; even if someone happens to get nominated saying this, there's no guarantee they'd actually follow through once in office and dealing with a bunch of pressure from essentially everyone _but_ the voters between election years. There are a ton of interests at play, and yes, voting a certain way might help, but reforming a corrupt system is definitely not as simple as "we just vote for the other guy this time".
  - poulsbohemian 3y ago
    >reforming a corrupt system is definitely not as simple as "we just vote for the other guy this time". Of course not. But do you see how that DA or PA are disincentivized to take on the police?
    - saghm 3y ago
      > But do you see how that DA or PA are disincentivized to take on the police? I don't see how to elect someone who doesn't have the same incentive with regard to the police. The fact that the disincentive to take on the police is such a fundamental part of how the job works is precisely why I don't think the problem can be solved by just electing a different DA; the system itself needs to be changed, and that requires a lot of coordination across multiple fronts. Voting for different people is necessary for that sort of change but not nearly sufficient, which is why I think that saying it's purely the fault of voters for electing the wrong people is a gross oversimplification.
    - SauciestGNU 3y ago
      Look what happened to Chesa Boudin, expect that to be the playbook opposing any prosecutor working toward systemic changes. Another example is Desantis removing elected prosecutors who oppose the police/fascist agenda.
      - Tangurena2 3y ago
qingcharles 3y ago
Having extensive experience in criminal courts, I can tell you that no DA that I know of would ever attempt to prosecute a police officer. For a start, the DA relies on its close cooperation with the police as 99% of the DA's office business is brought to them by the police. Secondly, any DA will tell you that convicting a police officer is incredibly hard. Juries generally do not like to convict police. Judges even less so. Having studied thousands of police reports, what is almost worse than testilying is that most reports are works of fiction. And the reports are what gets the defendants into court in the first place. Testilying only matters if an officer takes the stand, and an officer often only takes the stand in a trial. And 99% of criminal cases are resolved by plea before trial in the USA because a defendant does not want to risk a trial where the officer can lie and send them away for decades.
Gibbon1 3y ago
My take is the public defenders office should have to ability to call grand juries to indict officers, prosecutors, and judges for breaking the law.
- jakelazaroff 3y ago
  Decent idea in theory, but public defenders are underfunded and overworked as is.

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.
saghm 3y ago
So the police unions dominate the conversation to the point where they drown out all other points of view, and the press might help them, and this is our fault as voters...how? It's not like there are tons of obviously tough on police prosecutors running either; even if someone happens to get nominated saying this, there's no guarantee they'd actually follow through once in office and dealing with a bunch of pressure from essentially everyone _but_ the voters between election years. There are a ton of interests at play, and yes, voting a certain way might help, but reforming a corrupt system is definitely not as simple as "we just vote for the other guy this time".
- poulsbohemian 3y ago
  >reforming a corrupt system is definitely not as simple as "we just vote for the other guy this time". Of course not. But do you see how that DA or PA are disincentivized to take on the police?
  - saghm 3y ago
    > But do you see how that DA or PA are disincentivized to take on the police? I don't see how to elect someone who doesn't have the same incentive with regard to the police. The fact that the disincentive to take on the police is such a fundamental part of how the job works is precisely why I don't think the problem can be solved by just electing a different DA; the system itself needs to be changed, and that requires a lot of coordination across multiple fronts. Voting for different people is necessary for that sort of change but not nearly sufficient, which is why I think that saying it's purely the fault of voters for electing the wrong people is a gross oversimplification.
  - SauciestGNU 3y ago
    Look what happened to Chesa Boudin, expect that to be the playbook opposing any prosecutor working toward systemic changes. Another example is Desantis removing elected prosecutors who oppose the police/fascist agenda.
    - Tangurena2 3y ago

qingcharles 3y ago

Having extensive experience in criminal courts, I can tell you that no DA that I know of would ever attempt to prosecute a police officer. For a start, the DA relies on its close cooperation with the police as 99% of the DA's office business is brought to them by the police. Secondly, any DA will tell you that convicting a police officer is incredibly hard. Juries generally do not like to convict police. Judges even less so. Having studied thousands of police reports, what is almost worse than testilying is that most reports are works of fiction. And the reports are what gets the defendants into court in the first place. Testilying only matters if an officer takes the stand, and an officer often only takes the stand in a trial. And 99% of criminal cases are resolved by plea before trial in the USA because a defendant does not want to risk a trial where the officer can lie and send them away for decades.

Gibbon1 3y ago

My take is the public defenders office should have to ability to call grand juries to indict officers, prosecutors, and judges for breaking the law.

jakelazaroff 3y ago
Decent idea in theory, but public defenders are underfunded and overworked as is.