Reply With Quote
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...m_hp_ref=crime
TSA make a thread about this.
No indictment despite man being executed.
You forgot to mention.....
Deputies were called to the area on reports of an armed man wearing a checkered shirt walking at a nearby intersection. L.A. County Sheriff’s Homicide Lt. Eddie Hernandez said there were reports the man was actively shooting.
Hernandez said the deputies gave the man “several commands.”
“We have witnesses that say that the suspect turned, pointed the gun at the deputies, and a deputy-involved shooting occurred,” he told reporters.
Hernandez said the man had a .45 caliber handgun and that two bullets were found matching the weapon. KABC reports the man was suspected of firing the weapon into the air.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...m_hp_ref=crime
TSA make a thread about this.
No indictment despite man being executed.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/11/us/okl...iref=obnetwork
Cop who got convicted of rape of 13 woman rape handcuffed one to a hospital bed and raped her. Raped a minor on the front porch of her parents and several others in the back of a police car. Pulled one woman over and raped her during a traffic stop.
An Inmate Dies, and No One Is Punished
Inmates who have served time at the Clinton Correctional Facility here tell of being taken aside by a sergeant soon after they arrive and given a warning: Cross the guards, and bad things can happen.
And they do. Inmates describe being ambushed by guards and beaten, taunted with racial slurs, and kept out of sight, in solitary confinement, until the injuries inflicted on them have healed enough to avoid arousing su ion.
One story in particular has been passed along over the last few years as a kind of parable of brutality and injustice on the cellblocks.
Leonard Strickland was a prisoner with schizophrenia who got into an argument with guards, and ended up dead.
In the inmates’ telling, the guards got away with murder, ganging up on Mr. Strickland and beating him so viciously that he could barely move. The guards deny this, saying they acted only in self-defense and did what was necessary to subdue an out-of-control prisoner.
But what came next is indisputable. In a security video obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Strickland is seen in handcuffs, barely conscious and being dragged along the floor by officers, while a prison nurse standing close by does nothing. Even as he lies face down on the floor, near death, guards can be heard shouting, “Stop resisting.”
By the time an ambulance arrived, medical records described Mr. Strickland’s body as cold to the touch and covered in cuts and bruises, with blood flowing from his ears.
The 2010 case fits a troubling pattern of savage beatings by corrections officers at prisons across New York State and a department that rarely holds anyone accountable, issues that have beenhighlighted in a series of articles over the past year by The Times and The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization.
Mr. Strickland’s death was only briefly noted in local newspapers, and probably would have been forgotten by all but the officers and inmates. But the escape of two murderers from Clinton in June attracted extraordinary attention to the maximum-security prison, and details about its inner workings, long held secret, have started to reach outsiders.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/ny...er=rss&emc=rss
Indiana vet too scared to carry gun — or leave his house — after felony charge for shooting at shoplifters
An Indiana veteran is baffled that he was arrested on felony charges after opening fire at two shoplifting suspects fleeing a store near his home.“I thought, ‘Really? A felony charge?’ I’m very well-trained,”said Norman Reynolds, who chased the men out of the Big R store in Elkhart and fired his gun at them when he was unable to catch up, reported WBND-LD.
The 60-year-old up to five years in prison and a possible $10,000 fine if he’s convicted of criminal recklessness with a deadly weapon and pointing a firearm.
Police were already chasing the men out of the store during the October incident when Reynolds joined the pursuit, and they said he drew his handgun and fired one shot at the suspects after they got into a pickup truck.
“Mainly, I was in the infantry — and that’s what the infantry does, they shoot,” he said.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/indi...e+Raw+Story%29
a "vet" who walks around in his dress uniform?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/police-shooting-inglewood_566769bae4b080eddf560fec
Cop shots two, unarmed, men with shotguns and then they got accused of murder. Both were aquitted and now suing the officers involved.
Judge negates jury's $3.5 million verdict in Chicago police shooting
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-fatal-chicago-police-shooting-trial-met-20151213-story.html
Judge acquits Chicago police commander in spite of DNA evidence
charges he shoved his gun down a man's throat in spite of evidence showing the alleged victim's DNA on Evans' gun.
Judge Diane Cannon also played up the inconsistencies in Rickey Williams' account of the on-duty 2013 incident over the years, saying his testimony at the trial last week "taxes the gullibility of the credulous."
Williams was all too "eager to change his testimony at anyone's request to accommodate the evidence," the judge said.
The prosecution's strongest evidence – the recovery of Williams' DNA on Evans' service weapon – was belittled by Cannon as "of fleeting relevance or significance."
Evans' had enough "lawful contact" with Williams to explain the DNA on the commander's weapon, she said.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/l...214-story.html
CA policeman rapes 21-year-old with internal 'cavity search' & department attempts to bribe her
Guardian reporters Oliver Laughland and Jon Swaine have created a investigative series on the vast police corruption that has taken place in Kern County, California. So far, the series includes officer-related fatalities and excessive force which reportedly are the highest in America this year.
The newest revelations in the series have been added, and they expose the rape/sexual assault/misconduct by law enforcement officials—and their subsequent attempts to cover up the crimes after being reported. At least eight victims were offered bribes/deals as hush money.
One victim described her victimization as, “the worst night of my life.” She is known, in court, only as 21-year-old Jane Doe. She describes an assault by Kern Country deputy Gabriel Lopez which took place on March 25, 2013. Lopez and deputy Christopher Escobedo showed up at Doe’s apartment to do a spot check on Doe’s boyfriend who was on probation. But what happened after was illegal, disgusting, and all too common.
They then moved to her bedroom and found the 21-year-old woman stirring from sleep. The officers placed her in handcuffs. Lopez patted her down and then, according to a civil lawsuit, proceeded to move his hands down her shorts, grab her crotch and grope her. The handcuffs were removed. Then the officers left.
Approximately 10 minutes later Doe said Deputy Lopez arrived back at the apartment alone.
He told Doe he needed to perform a cavity search on her to check once more for drugs. He took her back to the bedroom and instructed her to take off all her clothes. He touched her all over her naked body as she bent over with her hands against the bed. She sobbed throughout. She begged him to stop, but he refused. And then he left.
Doe filed a report, and a week later officials came from Kern County’s sheriff’s department offering her up to $7,500 to waive her right to sue the department.
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015...r?detail=email
California Cop Guns Down Man Crawling from Car Wreckage on Video, Faces No Charges
A Paradise, California police officer who responded to the scene of a drunk driving crash will not face charges, Action News Now reports, after shooting the man behind the wheel multiple times as he tried to pull himself from the flipped vehicle.
The District Attorney has decided the Thanksgiving shooting, vividly captured in this newly release footage, was an “accidental shooting,” despite showing what very clearly appears to be the officer involved raising his weapon, firing, and then calmly holstering it.
According to Action News Now, Thomas was hit in the neck and may be permanently paralyzed:
Thomas was shot in the C7 and T1 vertebrae and could be paralyzed for the rest of his life. He remains in stable condition at Enloe Medical Center.
He will also face vehicular manslaughter charges for the crash, which killed his wife.
http://gawker.com/california-cop-gun...age-1747954638
Contract review shows how Baltimore police union shields officers from accountability
The Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police is covering court costs for each of the six officers charged. However, this role is atypical for the union, since it is usually so good at ensuring that officers never see charges at all. ThinkProgressreports:
A study by a criminologist who often examines policies for the DOJ found earlier this year that the contract between Baltimore and the Fraternal Order of Police contains several “offensive provisions” that prevent accountability and that violate “best practices” across the country. Provisions including the expungement of internal records and the existence of a “do not call” list of officers who cannot testify “impede the effective investigation of reported misconduct and shield officers who are in fact guilty of misconduct from meaningful discipline,” the study found.
The problems extend far beyond Baltimore. As Campaign Zero found in its new Police Union Contract Project, provisions are written in to union contracts in major cities across the country to protect officers accused of excessive force or abuse. The activist-led group analyzed more than 50 contracts and found that the vast majority have provisions that block accountability and protect officers from being investigated, indicted, and ultimately convicted.
These provisions ensure that many officers never face discipline, or charges for misconduct.
Even though the jury is deadlocked, the extreme nature of Freddie Gray’s death illustrates just how far things have to go for police officers to even see a courtroom.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/1...28Daily+Kos%29
San Antonio places $81,000 price tag on police email open records request
The City of San Antonio issued an $81,333 cost estimate Monday in response to an open records request from mySA.com asking for emails regarding suspensions within the San Antonio Police Department.
City legal officials said approximately 5,422 hours of labor at $15 an hour is needed to complete the request, which was filed Oct. 16, 2015 under the Texas Public Information Act.
The requested information includes all emails sent or received by SAPD employees that mentioned suspensions of officers or coverage of those suspensions by the Express-News and mySA.com in 2015.
City officials said the police department's email system does not have a function to search for specific terms across inboxes.
And check out the detailed explanation from the department about the labor involved:
"There are approximately 2,711 SAPD employees. The ITS Department would have to pull all SAPD mailboxes and then transfer those mailboxes onto a designated City employee's computer. The estimated cost is only for the amount of time it would take for the ITS Department to pull all the SAPD mailboxes and then transfer those mailboxes onto the designated City employee's computer. That City employee would then have to enter the requested search terms into each individual mailbox. After all e-mails from all mailboxes were locate, then the employee would have to review for confidential information. Some of the e-mails may need to be sent to the Attorney General's Office and other e-mails may require redactions... There could be an additional labor cost for those e-mails."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/1...28Daily+Kos%29
Or they could hire somewhat who knows how to query that type and have him do it automatically.
Can't figure out how to search email more efficiently than that?
Chicago Pays Millions but Punishes Few in Killings by Police
In Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, officers shot and killed 70 people, most of them black, in a five-year span ending in 2014. That was the most among the nation’s 10 largest cities during the same period, according to the Better Government Association, a nonprofit watchdog organization.
The Chicago Police Department has also been known for issuing little or no punishment to its own, even after a 2007 overhaul of its discipline system that was portrayed as creating a tough, autonomous authority.
Yet under that new system, the vast majority of complaints against the police stilldo not result in discipline. Of more than 400 police shootings since the Independent Police Review Authority was created in 2007, the agency has found claims of wrongdoing against officers valid in only two cases. The authority issues only recommendations for discipline. The police superintendent and the Police Board have the last word in the most egregious cases.
All the while, the city, which is in the middle of a fiscal crisis, has spent more than $500 million settling police cases since 2004.
In defending the department, a police union official said that the police seemed to have become “the new doormat” for a city that has witnessed surges of bloodshed as gangs have splintered and guns proliferated.
Dean Angelo Sr., president of the union representing Chicago’s rank-and-file officers, said that officers take thousands of guns off Chicago’s streets each year. That there have not been more shootings, he said, indicates that officers are showing restraint. This year, Chicago police have seized 6,714 illegal guns as of Monday, more than in the same period last year.
“That is good policing,” Mr. Angelo said. “But nobody looks at it that way.” He added: “The same politicians that are throwing us under the bus were banging our door down to get our endorsement when they were running for office.”
From 2011 to 2015, 97 percent of more than 28,500 citizen complaints resulted in no officer being punished, according to data recently released by the Invisible Ins ute, a nonprofit journalism organization, and the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic of the University of Chicago Law School. The Police Department and the review authority have questioned the data, though Mr. Emanuel said last week that the low rates of disciplinary action “defy credibility.”
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/18...-killings.html
SAPD will be getting body cams.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/loc...it-6598237.php
We'll how hard, expensive it will be to obtain the vids.
Guards inside prisons shouldn't have guns. That's pretty much an accepted fact. Except in Nevada—and the results are mayhem and death.
http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/a...ushpmg00000003
Attn gun fellators, there's some shotgun wounds porn for you to masturbate over.
San Francisco Cops Likely To Get Off The Hook For Sending Racist And phobic Text
A group of nine San Francisco police officers who exchanged racist and phobic text messages to one another likely won’t face disciplinary action because the charges against them were filed too late after their alleged misconduct was discovered, a San Francisco judge suggestedin a tentative ruling on Friday.
“Get ur pocket gun,” one officer texted a sergeant who complained that a friend of his wife’s had brought along her husband, a black man and an attorney, to dinner. “Keep it available in case the monkey returns to his roots. Its not against the law to put an animal down… U may have to kill the half breed kids too. Don’t worry. Their [sic] an abomination of nature anyway.”
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...fpd-miscoduct/
This is really unfair to go after the cops.
Cops were only acting just like 10Ms racists/ phobes/xenophobes in the Repug base.
and you guessed it, SAPD is asking for over 80K for records release
Ferguson cop says life is ‘ruined’ after pointing AR-15 at journalists and saying, ‘I’m going to f*cking kill you!’
A petulant public servant is now playing the role of ‘victim’ after he pointed his AR-15 at Free Thought Project live streamer, Rebel Z, aka John Zeigler.
The entire incident was caught on film, showing St. Ann police officer, Ray Albers with his gun raised pointing it directly at Zeigler, who was live streaming at the time.
“Oh my God, gun raised, gun raised,” stated Zeigler.
“My hands are up bro, my hands are up,” he says before Albers responds, “I’m going to f***ing kill you, get back, get back!”
“You’re going to kill him?” asks another individual before Zeigler asks, “did he just threaten to kill me?”
When Albers is asked for his name he responds, “go f*ck yourself.”
A week after he was caught on video committing assault with a deadly weapon, Albers resigned, but has avoided any form of discipline – until now.
While it’s unclear as to whether or not Albers will actually be found guilty of anything, the Missouri Department of Public Safety is attempting to hold this privileged member of society accountable for his actions. Had Albers been a mere commoner, he would most certainly already be in jail.
The state of Missouri says Albers acted “without legal justification” when he pointed his assault rifle at a crowd of people, and that his “threat to commit a felony” — specifically, murder — violated Missouri law.
By Barth’s logic, because multiple other cops all committed assault with a deadly weapon, Albers should be free to go.
This man pointed a loaded AR-15 at the heads of multiple innocent people. He then threatened to “f**king kill” them, and now he’s trying to claim that he is somehow the victim.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/ferg...e+Raw+Story%29
vid of the fat, shaved-headed wannabe hardass cop here: https://youtu.be/YknrZE0CCYE
Last edited by boutons_deux; 12-20-2015 at 10:49 AM.
Juvenile injustice? Kids in San Bernardino County pay the price with overzealous school cops
San Bernardino school police arrested more kids than cops in Sacramento, Oakland or San Francisco. What gives?
http://www.salon.com/2015/12/20/juve...s_school_cops/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...§ion=crime
Detective commits suicide after being charged with incident liberties with two minors. Boys, who he met while on the job.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crim...icle-1.2459206
Cop who broke man jaw while he was complying with his demands is back on the job.
People Are Waking Up to the Dark Side of American Policing, and Cops Don’t Like It One Bit
Pushing back against a creeping police state.
What is taking place and what the police and their supporters are largely reacting to is a modest push for sensible law enforcement reforms from groups as diverse asCampaign Zero, Koch Industries, the Cato Ins ute, The Leadership Conference, and the ACLU (my employer). Unfortunately, as the rhetoric ratchets up, many police agencies and organizations are increasingly resistant to any reforms, forgetting whom they serve and ignoring cons utional limits on what they can do.
Indeed, a closer look at law enforcement arguments against commonsense reforms like independently investigating police violence, demilitarizing police forces, or ending “for-profit policing” reveals a striking disregard for concerns of just about any sort when it comes to brutality and abuse. What this “debate” has revealed, in fact, is a mainstream policing mindset ready to manufacture fear without evidence and promote the belief that American civil rights and liberties are actually an impediment to public safety. In the end, such law enforcement arguments subvert the very idea that the police are there to serve the community and should be under civilian control.
And that, when you come right down to it, is the logic of the police state.
In May, a Wall Street Journal op-ed warned of a “new nationwide crime wave” thanks to “intense agitation against American police departments” over the previous year. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie went further. Talking recently with the host of CBS’s Face the Nation, the Republican presidential hopeful asserted that the Black Lives Matter movement wasn’t about reform but something far more sinister. “They’ve been chanting in the streets for the murder of police officers,” he insisted. Even the nation’s top cop, FBI Director James Comey, weighed in at the University of Chicago Law School, speaking of “a chill wind that has blown through American law enforcement over the last year.”
According to these figures and others like them, lawlessness has been sweeping the nation as the so-called Ferguson effect spreads. Criminals have been emboldened as police officers are forced to think twice about doing their jobs for fear of the infamy of starring in the next viral video. The police have supposedly become the targets of assassins intoxicated by “anti-cop rhetoric,” just as departments are being stripped of the kind of high-powered equipment they need to protect officers and communities. Even their funding streams have, it’s claimed, come under attack as anti-cop bias has infected Washington, D.C. Senator Ted Cruz caught the spirit of that critique byconvening a Senate subcommittee hearing to which he gave the le, “The War on Police: How the Federal Government Undermines State and Local Law Enforcement.” According to him, the federal government, including the president and attorney general, has been vilifying the police, who are now being treated as if they, not the criminals, were the enemy.
Beyond the storm of commentary and criticism, however, quite a different reality presents itself. In the simplest terms, there is no war on the police. Violent attacks against police officers remain at historic lows, even though approximately 1,000 people have been killed by the police this year nationwide. In just the past few weeks, videos have been released of problematic fatal police shootings in San Francisco and Chicago.
While it’s too soon to tell whether there has been an uptick in violent crime in the post-Ferguson period, no evidence connects any possible increase to the phenomenon of police violence being exposed to the nation. What is taking place and what the police and their supporters are largely reacting to is a modest push for sensible law enforcement reforms from groups as diverse asCampaign Zero, Koch Industries, the Cato Ins ute, The Leadership Conference, and the ACLU (my employer). Unfortunately, as the rhetoric ratchets up, many police agencies and organizations are increasingly resistant to any reforms, forgetting whom they serve and ignoring cons utional limits on what they can do.
Indeed, a closer look at law enforcement arguments against commonsense reforms like independently investigating police violence, demilitarizing police forces, or ending “for-profit policing” reveals a striking disregard for concerns of just about any sort when it comes to brutality and abuse.
What this “debate” has revealed, in fact, is a mainstream policing mindset ready to manufacture fear without evidence and promote the belief that American civil rights and liberties are actually an impediment to public safety. In the end, such law enforcement arguments subvert the very idea that the police are there to serve the community and should be under civilian control.
And that, when you come right down to it, is the logic of the police state.
Legal Plunder
houses, cars, boats -- it now regularly deprives people unconnected to the war on drugs of their property without due process of law and in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Not surprisingly, corruption follows.
Federal and state law enforcement can now often keep property seized or sell it and retain a portion of the revenue generated. Some of this, in turn, can be repurposed and distributed as bonuses in police and other law enforcement departments. The only way the dispossessed stand a chance of getting such “forfeited” property back is if they are willing to take on the government in a process where the deck is stacked against them.
In such cases, for instance, property owners have no right to an attorney to defend them, which means that they must either pony up additional cash for a lawyer or contest the seizure themselves in court. “It is an upside-down world where,” says the libertarian Ins ute for Justice, “the government holds all the cards and has the financial incentive to play them to the hilt.”
In this century, civil asset forfeiture has mutated into what’s now called “for-profit policing” in which police departments and state and federal law enforcement agencies indiscriminately seize the property of citizens who aren’t drug kingpins. Sometimes, for instance, distinctly ordinary citizenssuspected of driving drunk or soliciting pros utes get their cars confiscated. Sometimes they simply get cash taken from them on su ion of low-level drug dealing.
Like most criminal justice issues, race matters in civil asset forfeiture. This summer, the ACLU of Pennsylvania issued a report, Guilty Property, do enting how the Philadelphia Police Department and district attorney’s office abused state civil asset forfeiture by taking at least $1 million from innocent people within the city limits. Approximately 70% of the time, those people were black, even though the city’s population is almost evenly dividedbetween whites and African-Americans.
Currently, only one state, New Mexico, has done away with civil asset forfeiture entirely, while also severely restricting state and local law enforcement from profiting off similar national laws when they work with the feds. (The police in Albuquerque are, however, actively defying the new law, demonstrating yet again the way in which police departments believe the rules don’t apply to them.) That no other state has done so is hardly surprising. Police departments have become so reliant on civil asset forfeiture to pad their budgets and acquire “little goodies” that reforming, much less repealing, such laws are a tough sell.
"[O]ver the past seven years, the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office has donated $1.2 million of seized criminal money to support youth programs like the Boys & Girls Clubs, Boy Scouts, YMCA, high school graduation night lock-in events, youth sports as well as veterans groups, local food banks, victims assistance programs, and Home of Home in Casa Grande."
Under this logic, police officers can steal from people who haven’t even been charged with a crime as long as they share the wealth with community organizations -- though, in fact, neither in Pinal County or elsewhere is that where most of the confiscated loot appears to go. Think of this as the development of a culture of thievery masquerading as Robin Hood in blue.
Due Process Plus
It’s no mystery why so few police officers are investigated and prosecuted for using excessive force and violating someone’s rights. “Local prosecutors rely on local police departments to gather the evidence and testimony they need to successfully prosecute criminals,” according to Campaign Zero . “This makes it hard for them to investigate and prosecute the same police officers in cases of police violence.”
Since 2005, according to an analysis by theWashington Post and Bowling Green State University, only 54 officers have been prosecuted nationwide, despite the thousands of fatal shootings by police. As Philip M. Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green, puts it, “To charge an officer in a fatal shooting, it takes something so egregious, so over the top that it cannot be explained in any rational way. It also has to be a case that prosecutors are willing to hang their reputation on.”
For many in law enforcement, however, none of this should concern any of us. When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order appointing a special prosecutor to investigate police killings, for instance, Patrick Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, insisted: “Given the many levels of oversight that already exist, both internally in the NYPD [New York Police Department] and externally in many forms, the appointment of a special prosecutor is unnecessary.” Even before Cuomo’s decision, the chairman of New York’s District Attorneys Association calledplans to appoint a special prosecutor for police killings “deeply insulting.”
Such pushback against the very idea of independently investigating police actions has, post-Ferguson, become everyday fare, and some law enforcement leaders have staked out a position significantly beyond that. The police, they clearly believe, should get special treatment.
“By virtue of our dangerous vocation, we should expect to receive the benefit of the doubt in controversial incidents,” wrote Ed Mullins, the president of New York City’s Sergeants Benevolent Association, in the organization’s magazine, Frontline. As if to drive home the point, its cover depicts Baltimore State Attorney Marilyn Mosby under the ominous headline “The Wolf That Lurks.” In May, Mosby had announced indictments of six officers in the case of Freddie Gray, who died in Baltimore police custody the previous month. The message being sent to a prosecutor willing to indict cops was hardly subtle: you’re a traitor.
Mullins put forward a legal standard for officers accused of wrongdoing that he would never support for the average citizen -- and in a situation in which cops already get what former federal prosecutor Laurie Levenson calls “a super presumption of innocence." In addition, police unions in many states have aggressively pushed for their own bills of rights, which make it nearly impossible for police officers to be fired, much less charged with crimes when they violate an individual’s civil rights and liberties.
In 14 states, versions of a Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBR) have already been passed, while in 11 others they are under consideration. These provide an “extra layer of due process” in cases of alleged police misconduct, according to Samuel Walker, an expert on police accountability. In many of the states without a LEOBR, the Marshall Project has discovered, police unions have directly negotiated the same rights and privileges with state governments.
LEOBRs are, in fact, amazingly un-American do ents in the protectionsthey afford officers accused of misconduct during internal investigations, rights that those officers are never required to extend to their suspects. Though the specific language of these laws varies from state to state, notesMike Riggs in Reason, they are remarkably similar in their special considerations for the police.
“Unlike a member of the public, the officer gets a ‘cooling off’ period before he has to respond to any questions.
Unlike a member of the public, the officer under investigation is privy to the names of his complainants and their testimony against him before he is ever interrogated.
Unlike a member of the public, the officer under investigation is to be interrogated ‘at a reasonable hour,’ with a union member present.
Unlike a member of the public, the officer can only be questioned by one person during his interrogation.
Unlike a member of the public, the officer can be interrogated only ‘for reasonable periods,’ which ‘shall be timed to allow for such personal necessities and rest periods as are reasonably necessary.’
Unlike a member of the public, the officer under investigation cannot be ‘threatened with disciplinary action’ at any point during his interrogation. If he is threatened with punishment, whatever he says following the threat cannot be used against him.”
The Marshall Project refers to these laws as the “Blue Shield” and “the original Bill of Rights with an upgrade.’’ Police associations, naturally, don’t agree. "All this does is provide a very basic level of cons utional protections for our officers, so that they can make statements that will stand up later in court," says Vince Canales, the president of Maryland's Fraternal Order of Police.
Put another way, there are two kinds of due process in America -- one for cops and another for the rest of us. This is the reason why the Black Lives Matter movement and other civil rights and civil liberties organizations regularly call on states to create a special prosecutor’s office to launch independent investigations when police seriously injure or kill someone.
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/people-are-waking-dark-side-american-policing-and-cops-dont-it-one-bit?akid=13795.187590.KN0sce&rd=1&src=newsletter10 47695&t=8
Last edited by boutons_deux; 12-21-2015 at 12:11 PM.
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