I don’t have much to add to the Garner debate, but I do have a question. What exactly has to happen for a cop to be indicted by a grand jury? What is the line that has to be crossed that a prosecutor won’t throw the case and a grand jury won’t balk?
I asked on twitter last night, and someone said “field dress the corpse,” and at this point, I don’t think that is too far off. Seriously, what does it take for a grand jury to indict cops?
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
Black cop kills white man?
dmsilev
Kill a rich white person?
Justin
All it really takes is a DA who genuinely wants to indict a cop and isn’t just using the Grand Jury process as a cover for not charging the officer with a crime.
Smiling Mortician
@Justin:
Or a unicorn.
Belafon
It’s easy to dispair but there was a time when lynching a black man got you an audience and a favorable review in a newspaper.
It’s going to take 1) the public turning against the police, and 2) the “good” police officers turning on the “bad” ones.
It’ll probably also take the police killing a white kid.
HR Progressive
When an Important White Male is killed indiscriminately, then the cop who pulled the trigger will face an indictment.
Until then? I wouldn’t hold your breath.
skerry
And, I’ll put this here too…
From previous thread: Mashable has a screen capture of the now deleted St Louis County police Facebook page and tweet concerning the death of 12 year old Tamir Rice. Here’s the tweet:
Belafon
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): A black cop injured a white man and guess what? They are presecuting the black cop.
Mnemosyne
At one point I said, “Rape women while on duty” but, nope, some assholes got away with that, too.
p.a.
Agree with black cop kills white. Also non racial: cops who steal/use/sell drug evidence or get bought out by drug dealers. Cops who prey on prostitutes, if they have the bad manners to harm or kill them.
celticdragonchick
@Justin:
Even then…getting a conviction is nigh impossible.
The DA in Orange County pulled out the stops in trying those piece of shit Fullerton cops who beat Kelly Thomas to death, and it did no good.
Of course, we can point to the Rodney King trial, and then there was the San Bernardino deputy who shot an air force cop three times in the back in 2007 and was aquitted in trial.
If you really want nightmares…google “Robin Pratt raid” and see what happened to her.
The asshole who machine gunned her and drenched her daughter and niece in her life blood as she kneeled on the ground pleading for their lives (on a bad tip raid, no less) was not indicted and is still a cop and lecturer today.
A cop can walk up to you and gun you down in front of 100 witnesses with smart phones and cameras…and 99 times out of 100, he would not be held to any account as long as he says you made a “furtive movement”.
Tommy
Let me be careful. I wrestled a lot. That move is a way to take down a larger person. Not a death move. But you don’t use it in this manner unless you want to “tap out” the other person. I get the cops wanted to get this guy in control. Said over and over he can’t breath. Seems to me that is when you might take action. Listen!
Citizen_X
Kill another cop?
skerry
@Tommy: It is an illegal move in NYC. Unless you’re a white cop, evidently.
scav
@Smiling Mortician: Oh, the local DA might have higher political aspirations and need a quick and dirty burst of PR. Might cut a deal with the local PD also in need of a little PR and help dealing with one of their own (bit of a message). They’d no doubt count on the downstream acquittal so that no real damage was done, but lines on a political CV and soundbites sometimes demand. Basically, quadraped with single horn indeed.
JPL
As long as the local DA who is tied to the police bring the evidence to the grand jury, it won’t happen. Maybe if it were a high ranking republican’s son or daughter, there would be an indictment. Democrats don’s count.
Woodrowfan
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
not if the white is poor. Black cop kills white middle class (or wealthy) kid whose parents have “connections”
Origuy
This one just happened, although the killing was four years ago:
Betty Cracker
I think one of the problems is that people are so fearful of crime that they’re willing to put up with being treated like inmates by cops. And they shouldn’t be so afraid — crime is at historically low levels!
I’d love to think the Brown case and now the Garner case and all the other fucking inexcusable cases would raise a critical mass of people who want to do something about it. But then I remember how even dead first graders at Sandy Hook couldn’t close the gun show loophole.
J
And what would it take to stop people, including high government officials like King, from rushing forward to defend the police killing someone?
This is a side issue, but while watching the sickening video of Garner being strangled and the video Digby posted of the mentally disturbed homeless man who was killed by police, I was struck by the self-fulfilling prophecy implicit in the police behavior. Here are non-violent people who are suddenly attacked by a gang of police, choking and beating their victim while screaming commands at them. The victim is then described as ‘resisting arrest’. I doubt I would have voluntary control of my body, e.g., the ability to put my hands behind my back, in such conditions.
celticdragonchick
@J:
Yes.
The current tactics of immediate violent police escalation absolutely guarentee panicked resistance…which leads to increasing police excuses to escalate even more.
samiam
Son of Steve Cole the one man angry mindless mob continues to milk racial tension stories for their click bait value.
Clearly some white guy sitting on his a$$ in front of a computer in but fuuk Virginia can related to urban black issues and what the police have to put up with everyday.
Yes, twitter is where everyone goes when they need to consult the oracle of truth and wisdom….OBVIOUSLY….pffft.
David in NY
It happens. At least when the cop is not engaged in law enforcement, but a personal vendetta. See Thomas Livoti, who killed Anthony Baez with a chokehold after the football Baez and his brother were playing with on a street in the Bronx accidentally hit Livoti’s car. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Baez
Livoti got indicted in the state, but waived a jury (which in NY state, unlike the Feds, he had the unrestricted right to do), and was acquitted by a state court judge after trial. The feds indicted for civil rights violations, he was convicted, and he served six years in jail.
Livoti had a number of prior charges of abusive conduct, but none had been upheld. It has gone relatively unremarked that Pantaleo had egregious prior charges for which he was not fired, but for which the City paid substantial settlements. In the first, Pantaleo twice strip searched the plaintiffs without probable cause after stopping their car.
A second suit, apparently still unresolved, similarly charges an arrest without probable cause.
Bruce K
I remember in cases like Rodney King, Amadou Diallo, and Abner Louima, the cops actually did get indicted and went to trial. And in the Louima case, there were actually convictions. Maybe I was naive in my youth, but it feels like we’ve regressed since then.
Changes in attitude post-9/11 can’t account for all of it, can they? What the hell has changed since then?
Barbara
Around here (Metropolitan D.C.) police have been prosecuted for using excessive force, at least in some suburban jurisdictions. Some have even been convicted. In NYC, as well, there are police who have been indicted and a few convicted for using excessive or unjustified force, but it’s hard to get a conviction. What sways juries, I think, is the sense that police are operating with incomplete information and so, they get the benefit of the doubt on whether their belief of imminent danger was reasonable. I would point out that what happened in Ferguson is somewhat different from the Garner case, in that discharging a firearm is always the use of lethal force — in the Garner case, the grand jury was probably trying to grapple with the fact that the amount of force used was not “intended” to be lethal, and normally isn’t (an intent you simply can’t avoid with guns).
Tommy
@Betty Cracker: I am not sure I can tell you where the keys are for my front door. Never locked. It is this thing. Not sure where I lock my front door.
David in NY
@Tommy: Does it look like a wrestling move to you as applied in the video? I recollect seeing the arm around Garner’s neck against the throat, as the coroner confirmed. I don’t think it went around his arm and shoulder, with arm going behind the head as I learned in wrestling. I wrestled in gym in high school; we weren’t allowed to strangle the other guy.
celticdragonchick
@samiam:
Time for your midday nap, dear. You can have a cookie when you get up. Run along now.
ItAintEazy
@Mnemosyne: @celticdragonchick: I believe two of those cases did pass grand jury, and the last with Pratt didn’t have an actual grand jury but instead a coroner’s inquest in which they concluded a crime has been committed. The DA on that case just decided there wasn’t “enough evidence” that there was any crime committed.
gbear
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
I believe the last cop who was charged in St. Louis was a black cop who slapped the hand of a white person. He was fired.
NotMax
The ball (such as it is) is in Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch’s court. (reference)
cmorenc
@Justin:
This.
Query: What would have happened if the Grand Jury e.g. in the Wilson/Ferguson/Brown incident had decided to go rogue on the prosecutor’s expectations, and actually issued an indictment for e.g. voluntary manslaughter? Would McCulloch (the St. Louis County Prosecutor) have been stuck with either going forward to trial or else attempting to negotiate some sort of plea bargain with Wilson? Or, despite the grand jury’s indictment, would the Prosecutor have had leeway to seek outright dismissal of the charges (albeit a far more politically awkward move than putting on a dog-and-pony show successfully designed to elicit a no-indictment decision in the first place, but we’re hypothesizing a scenario where the grand jury indicts anyway).
celticdragonchick
@Bruce K:
The only reason there was a conviction in the Louima case was the sodomy angle. If they had just beat the shit out of him and said he was resisting a search in jail, they would have never even been charged.
The fact that it takes a ruptured colon from being sodomized with a toilet plunger handle tells you how fucking had it is to hold police accountable…and should also tell you those cops didn’t expect to be held accountable in the first place.
skerry
1956: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote in a memo: “There has been no allegation made that the victim [Emmett Till] has been subjected to the deprivation of any right or privilege which is secured and protected by the Constitution and the laws of the United States…”
The past is never dead, wrote William Faulkner, the South’s novelist laureate and a famous son of Mississippi. “It’s not even past.”
Emma
@samiam: He’s still not that into you, sweet pea.
Zandar
For the victim of that cop to be a white person of means.
David in NY
@Barbara: True, but I don’t think anybody familiar with the law thinks that Pantaleo had to intend to kill to be convicted of a crime. The crime of negligent homicide doesn’t require any actual intent to kill, or even to harm. So if the DA were serious, the grand jury would have known there was probable cause to believe that Pantaleo’s actions were a chokehold, were unreasonable because chokeholds are forbidden and known to cause death, and that this was enough, even if Pantaleo had no subjective intent to harm the defendant, to charge a crime. There may also be assault or aggravated assault crimes that could apply. Reckless endangerment, for example.
celticdragonchick
@ItAintEazy:
Yes. I was pointing out that even with an indictment, it is next to impossible to get a conviction in this country for whatever reasons.
The Pratt case is still inexcusable. Fucking nightmarish.
Elizabelle
@cmorenc:
I wonder if you need a special prosecutor for officer involved shootings?
It seems to be a conflict of interest for prosecuting attorneys to investigate and prosecute their allies. Their duty is to do so, but they clearly do not. And they have divided loyalties and are political animals.
Shakezula
I suppose if the police officer set fire to members of the grand jury the survivors might feel moved to bring charges.
@Tommy: Let you just read up on the NYPD’s complete ban on chokeholds because people subjected to them kept dying and get back to us. Or not.
beth
I don’t remember if this has been discussed here but it’s a horrific story about the Chicago PD. I’ve had some dealings with them and believe every word of it. Two men beaten up by cops for no apparent reason, cops called to the scene escort the beaters away and try to cover up the whole thing.
http://www.vice.com/read/city-of-silence-117
ItAintEazy
Apparently they don’t even need a grand jury to charge this cop with a crime
On Edit: ah, gbear beat me
SatanicPanic
It has to take place somewhere that values black life. It’s not impossible, I’d link to it by I got no HTML skills, but in Bloomfield, NJ Marcus Jeter was originally indicted for resisting arrest- he got the dashcam released and not only were the charges dropped, the police were arrested and indicted on assault and falsifying records charges. That was in February.
David in NY
@cmorenc: Probably depends on the jurisdiction. In federal court, a prosecutor must move to dismiss an entire indictment (nolle prosequi), once brought, and thus get approval of the court. This is usually granted of course, but could be denied, which would be really, really awkward. This may or may not be the rule in MO or NY. I don’t know.
celticdragonchick
@Zandar:
Basically yes.
White member of the top ten percent.
See this video of what happens when a top 1% female lawyer and CEO gets involved in a police harrasement case with her black handyman…
God bless her for stepping in. Still, anybody else would be spitting teeth on the asphalt or just plain dead (and cops on cop message boards really wanted her blood on this one).
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: So what is it that makes so many Americans so afraid? I find that this cuts across political lines. Are they so afraid because they have so much to lose?
For example, the terrible attacks in Mumbai in the November of 2008 have seem to had no lasting impact, unlike say the attacks of September 11.
SRW1
t@Emma:
That’s only one half of the problem. The other half is that nobody else is either.
Barbara
@David in NY: David, I totally agree with your take on the situation. When there is reasonable evidence of a version of the facts that is consistent with the commission of a crime, an indictment should issue. That’s my view in both of these cases, although I think the New York case was probably a much lower level of culpability. Subjective intent to harm is not required, you are right. Knowingly or recklessly using a level of force that is objectively understood to be lethal or dangerous is all that is needed, however, when a gun is used, there is no question that this element is met. The issue is the chokehold — the police officer’s testimony, no doubt coached, was that he did not intend to use a chokehold. This doesn’t seem consistent with the videos. So that’s really the issue here, as far as I can tell — if he used a chokehold deliberately, and a chokehold is the application of potentially lethal force, then that’s one kind of crime. If he intended to do something different from a chokehold, and never meant to use that level of force, it’s not clear a crime was committed, and if it was, it’s one with lower culpability. I used to work for a court and I am stating simply as a matter of fact that police in this situation get most juries to give them the benefit of the doubt, fairly or not.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: Possibly hysterical media coverage has something to do with it.
ruemara
There is no limit. Everything you think you know about LEO from tv, where killing an actual criminal results in an investigation, that’s clearly wrong. They can gun me down on tv, as I’m on my knees, and a large swath of the country will justify it. They will celebrate it. Field dress the corpse? That still won’t get an indictment. Blacks are free targets for killer cops. Maybe, if you have options and you’re black, you should escape this hellhole.
Linnaeus
Perhaps part of the problem is that crimes such as we saw in the Garner case are viewed as aberrations, rather than the system working as intended.
raven
@celticdragonchick: the video is gone
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: I don’t think that explains everything, Indian brethren of CNN and Fox are just as breathless and over the top.
Cacti
Black or hispanic cop kills white female?
David in NY
@Betty Cracker:
C’mon. Of selling untaxed cigarettes or shoplifting? No. If fear has anything to do with it, it’s unreasonable fear of any black male. Whites considerably overestimate the portion of crime committed by blacks and have what only can be called a racist attitude toward them, since it has nothing to do with individual guilt, but rather with racial status.
ruemara
@Cacti: That would just give Nancy Grace a lady boner.
NotMax
@skerry
Late 60s/very early 70s: Hoover issued an F.B.I. directive ordering investigations into every black student group at every college in the U.S. including requesting the development of “racial informants” to report on “all indications of efforts by foreign powers to take over the Negro militant movement.”
From a leaked F.B.I. file of the time: “Increased campus disorders involving black students pose a definite threat to the nation’s stability and security…”
No link, as the quotes and info come from material which still have among stuff held onto from back then.
celticdragonchick
@raven:
Sorry about that.
Try here.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/local/dc-police-investigating-burglary-stop-man/2014/10/07/f3704e36-4e4c-11e4-877c-335b53ffe736_video.html
In the immortal words of Danton at the guillotine: “it is well worth the effort.”
scav
@Cacti: So raping ok, killing off-limits? Ignoring rape allegations and evidence are nearly SOP. I’m not sure the new manly male buys into protecting the whole wimminz and childerz shit. They either do as they’re told or they get boring as hobbies.
Sherparick
@dmsilev: Yep. Although not likely to happen as police know it is alright to kick down, and not so good to kick up. Apparently if you beat a homeless white guy to death, that will get you indicted, but you will still likely be acquitted. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2014/0114/Kelly-Thomas-case-why-police-were-acquitted-in-killing-of-homeless-man-video
RaflW
Well, we could start by forcing some of these bastard D.A.s to resign. Now, I don’t yet know how to get that to happen. But it is the D.A.s that are the problem. They are too cosy with the cops, they become friends with many members of the force in the day to day operations of the crime and punishment system (I refuse to call it a justice system, it clearly fails that mark).
Until a few D.A.s get handed their walking papers, this process is f*kd.
And I’ll add, if Tamir Rice’s killer walks out of a no-indict GJ, the whole damn thing may come unglued. I don’t advocate violence, but I can easily foresee it if Loehmann gets a pass.
jibeaux
@Belafon:
Michael Bell.
But his dad actually got the law changed in Wisconsin after that, and with tremendous effort and expense. The police are no longer supposed to investigate themselves. Independent prosecutors, since DA is an elected position and their campaigns are often funded and endorsed by police unions.
David in NY
@Barbara: Right. And any DA worth his pay would have pointed out that was no wrestling hold that Pantaleo applied but a stranglehold, with his arm pushed against Garner’s throat. Pantaleo was the aggressor, he had time to plan his move, he was aided by a whole team, and he used a chokehold. I don’t think there’s any credible view that was an accident, and I fault the DA for not making it clear to the grand jury. (Of course, the grand jury might on its own have decided that Pantaleo was a nice boy and the death an accident. The DA sometimes doesn’t get an indictment when a presentable defendant testifies, though usually in non-violent (i.e., drug) cases. But I have no confidence that the Staten Island DA put forth a credible counterargument based on the video and the coroner’s report.)
By the way, the chokehold as applied does not give the attacker the kind of leverage that a true wrestling hold would, and Pantaleo did not need that leverage, because by choking Garner he could immobilize him for a moment, and the other officers could take him down, which is what happened. As Garner’s lawyer pointed out on TV, it was not merely the choking that caused the death, but also pressure on the chest, applied by the other officers. They were not charged and were granted immunity to testify, probably assisting Pantaleo’s case.
Kevin
Very slightly off topic, but I remember in the 90’s when I was in high school, taking a law class. One thing that we discussed, being right after the OJ trial, was the “troubling” trend of black jury nullification. How those awful blacks (that’s not the words used, but definitely implied in my class and in the media in general) were subverting the legal system, letting criminals free.
And now I think back on that and realize how right those people were, and ultimately, how stacked the system is against them. And if I were in their position, you can damn well believe that i’m thinking long and hard on whether I want to convict another black person, knowing that if his colour was different he’d probably be let go.
Cacti
Compare what happened to Brown or Garner vs. what happened to Sarah Culhane (19 year old white female).
While driving a BMW sedan, Culhane hit another car, fled from the scene, ran a red light and hit two other cars, took off on foot, then kicked the arresting officer in the head.
And yet, Culhane was taken alive, without being beaten, choked, tasered, maced, or shot.
Sounds like another spoiled rich kid, so she’ll likely get off with a slap on the wrist and community service.
raven
@celticdragonchick: Thanks.
celticdragonchick
@Sherparick:
Exactly.
I recall in a history class I was a TA in on gender history in the US, the NYPD was brutally beating women who went on strike over poor pay and various issues in the 1920’s. Broken bones, internal bleeding, you name it.
Finally, wives of the top New York elite started marching with the workers incognito to stop the police beatings. The NYPD could not afford to beat a Vanderbilt girl, and they knew it.
Barry
@Zandar: “For the victim of that cop to be a white person of means.”
And I’d bet that most of the time that cop has to be non-white.
celticdragonchick
@Kevin:
I will absolutely not take any police testimony at face value if I am on a jury. No police video…it didn’t fucking happen.
Barbara
One issue here is whether what Garner was doing should even be the kind of crime you can be arrested for. If the police (or even more ideally, a different kind of peace officer — one without guns) could issue a summons or citation for low level regulatory infractions, instead of arresting someone, that would reduce the level of confrontations between police and non-violent citizens. D.C. just “decriminalized” low levels of possession of marijuana, so instead of leading to an arrest, it leads to the equivalent of a parking ticket. To me, that’s the reform that would really help, because it would avoid situations where police can harass people for things that aren’t really a threat to public safety, even if they annoy local merchants.
Cacti
Per Raw Story:
Five Montgomery County (Ohio) Sheriff’s Deputies are being investigated for sending racist text messages between 2011 and 2013.
Among those being investigated are Capt. Thomas J. Flanders, who is in charge of the County Jail.
Texts were made on duty, and some of them were directed at African-American Deputies.
Betty Cracker
@David in NY: Certainly racism is a huge element. But there seems to be a general — and unfounded — fear of crime that leads people to give cops a lot of leeway.
My big old redneck dad’s cardinal rule for us teenagers back in the day was, “Don’t ever do anything to bring the cops to my house.” I’ve heard fellow white people talking about police brutality cases involving white cops and white suspects remark that the victim was stupid to mouth off to a cop. And I’ve told my own white kid not to ever mouth off to a cop because she’s likely to get arrested or worse.
It’s obviously several orders of magnitude worse for minorities, but everybody walks on eggshells around cops because they have so damn much power. Why do we accept this state of affairs if not fear?
Barbara
@David in NY: David, I knew that they had been given immunity but I didn’t understand the reasons for why the immunity was considered necessary. You bet that would have influenced the jury — an alternative theory for the death by people who had been immunized does not bode well for an indictment if it feels to much like a single person is being scapegoated.
Sherparick
@celticdragonchick: When indicted, as in the Kelly Thomas case, defense counsel usually throws the “thin blue line” defense at the jury, that police have to be granted to discretion to use the force they need to in order to save lives (e.g. your particular lives Mr. and Ms. Juror, otherwise you will scruggy nut cases like Kelly Thomas looking into your car window.) The pictures of what the cops did to Thomas were sickening.
ET
I have two example from New Orleans. Sadly.
1. Murder another cop. See Antoinette Frank and her accomplice killing of two members of a family who ran a restaurant as well as a fellow New Orleans Police Department officer Ronald A. Williams II. (1995)
2. Have the FBI involved. Len Davis (cop known as “Robocop” and “the Desire Terrorist,”) involved in the execution of Kim Groves. Caught because he was recorded on a federal wiretap ordering the Oct. 13, 1994 execution.
Oh. And both got the death penalty.
skerry
Guardian: If Eric Garner’s killer can’t be indicted, what cop possibly could? It’s time to fix grand juries
Scott S.
@Citizen_X:
What he said. There are plenty of white people who’ve been assaulted or murdered by cops, and the cops walk. The only way you’ll get a cop indicted is if he kills another cop. They might even be able to get away with shooting a prosecutor or a politician. But shooting another cop would absolutely be the only guarantee they’d put someone in jail for that.
Barbara
@celticdragonchick: celticdragonchick, me neither. I think most people truly don’t understand how confrontational police have become because “others” are disproportionately targets. But when someone is stopped by the police and sees firsthand how they, “upstanding citizens” are presumed to be the enemy, they might change their views. I have never been a true believer in police rectitude, but I got a firsthand dose of this treatment when I stopped at a police block around the White House. After asking the officer if it would be okay if I turned around and went another way, within two minutes, he was threatening me with lethal force if I made another move. I was not challenging him AT ALL. I had given up and was resigned to waiting so I leaned over and was starting to look at the daily paper while I was waiting. And he just went nuts because I was moving around in my vehicle. He did not show his gun (somehow I think that would have been a really big deal because he was secret service police) but it was and still is shocking to me to be treated that way. I think about this guy when I read about lapses by the SS — this was before Obama was president.
Goblue72
Half this country are mean spirited, authoritarian bullies. They prove it every two years on Election Day. Why are we surprised then that there isn’t more outrage over this stuff? Our “fellow” Americans aren’t really our fellows.
burnspbesq
@RaflW:
Let’s assume, for purposes of discussion, that you are able to mount a primary or general election campaign and get rid of an elected county DA whose office failed to get an indictment of a cop in what appears to be a case of racially motivated use of excessive force against a suspect.
Now what?
Depending on the size of the county, there are still between three and 1,000 career lawyers in that office whose ability to do their jobs effectively depends on having good working relationships with the police.
You may feel good about what you’ve accomplished, but have you really accomplished anything meaningful? Have you changed the culture in that office? Most likely not, I would respectfully submit.
As I said somewhere a few days ago, it seems to me that the approach more likely to succeed in reducing the incidence of unjustified use of force is a thorough overhaul of how we recruit, train, evaluate, and pay cops. Which is clearly a long-term project.
celticdragonchick
@Barbara:
Wow. Yep…that it the old “take control of the situation and make lots of threats” style of policing we all got from the Gates LAPD of the 80’s.
Cacti
@skerry:
I am a lawyer, and I hate grand jury proceedings. I much prefer the probable cause/pretrial hearing model that is adversarial, done in open court, and a judge decides if there is enough evidence to bind the case over for a criminal trial.
Bill
Cop is caught by surveillance camera breaking in to a sorority house on an SEC campus. Video shows him raping and then stabbing to death the blond haired, blue eyed daughter of a GOP bigwig.
Belafon
@burnspbesq: If they want to keep being a DA, then eventually one will learn to take these types of cases to trial.
skerry
@Cacti: Seems like a better way to handle things. Omnes said yesterday that some states require a grand jury. Is this regulatory or do laws need to change?
Sherparick
@celticdragonchick: Actually, it was little earlier, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory (just before the fire.) http://video.pbs.org/video/1817898383/
Of course, if the Koch Brothers, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, etc. have their way, we will soon be back to this “Golden Era” of capitalism.
From the 1880s to now, police have used to bust strikes and persecute political dissenters. Almost every day on Lawyers, Guns, and Money, Scott Loomis will have short blog on “This Day in Labor History.” They take their own rage and frustration with the powers that be, and “kick down, so to speak.”
“White privilege” is a funny thing. It can be lost as the Okies of the 1930s found out.
Tom Joad: “Then it don’t matter. I’ll be all around in the dark – I’ll be everywhere. Wherever you can look – wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build – I’ll be there, too. ” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032551/quotes
Cacti
@skerry:
It’s a state by state issue.
Some require a grand jury, others give prosecutors the option of one or the others. But it’s governed by statute.
Elizabelle
I think you need all cop shootings, particularly against the community, referred to a special prosecutor.
Conflict of interest in expecting the regular enforcement channels — which depend on goodwill and cooperation of the police — to prosecute their usual allies.
Cops have to be better trained — they are peace officers, not an occupying force. They can and sometimes should retreat while awaiting backup. Cameras are not a panacea — they did not work in the Garner case — and you cannot depend on a (sometimes bad) officer to use them properly.
Darren Wilson was a badly trained police officer, as was the cop who summarily killed Tamir Rice as first response. Neither belonged on the force. Perhaps police should be screened for empathy and common sense. And hasn’t it been shown the police screen out those candidates with a high IQ? How’s that working for them? This is a jobless recovery. Probably a better pool of candidates than traditionally …
All this said: too many guns on the streets, and it’s understandable the police feel they themselves are endangered, even while the unarmed civilian body count increases.
Matt McIrvin
@Belafon:
That time is today, isn’t it? Darren Wilson apparently got paid big bucks for TV interviews. Zimmerman had a pretty good fan club going for a while there, though his personality apparently makes it hard for him to stay out of trouble.
David in NY
@burnspbesq: You might follow the work of Ken Thompson, Brooklyn DA, who has established a unit in his office explicitly charged with reviewing claims of wrongful convictions, many of which were the work of one corrupt, or other lazy or incompetent, police officers. He got elected to do this, and he’s doing it.
burnspbesq
@Belafon:
Based on that comment, I’m forced to believe that you don’t fully understand how big the difference is between the evidentiary standard for indictment (probable cause) and the evidentiary standard for conviction (beyond a reasonable doubt). Do you really want prosecutors to be required to take cases that are obvious losers to trial? What do you gain from acquittals in cases where a deal could have been made that would have included a requirement that the indicted officer resign from the force?
David in NY
Interestingly, a defendant’s constitutional right to indictment by a grand jury is one of the only (perhaps the only) rights in the bill of rights that applies only against the federal government, not against the states. Not so fundamental as the others, apparently.
NCSteve
Well, the New Orleans bridge massacre cops are still out, pending appeal of the ruling that threw out their federal Civil Rights conviction because U.S. attorneys made anonymous posts about the case on the Internet (on what the judge called a “bulletin board” *snerx*). And then there’s the New York cop who was merely planning to murder, cook and eat women. Also freed, because, hey, just a fantasy.
So it’s not clear to me that merely field dressing the corpse would be enough because, hey, wasting it would just compound the tragedy.
No, I’m going to have to go with stalk, rape, murder, rape, and then eat an attractive rich, white college girl. That should be good for a a conviction and maybe six years on an involuntary manslaughter charge.
skerry
Well, here you go
FlipYrWhig
What’s weird to me about the Garner and Brown cases is the behavior of the grand juries. They seem to be making decisions that aren’t actually theirs to make. They seem to be using that very high standard that’s supposed to apply to trial juries–which isn’t what they’re supposed to do. And I don’t get that. It seems like if there’s any controversy at all, the grand jury’s call should be _to indict_, because that way both sides get their day in court. Instead, because there’s controversy, two sides, etc., they’re making the call _not to indict_. What the hell? I’m sure it’s confusing to get all this information and complicated instructions, but it’s not that confusing to say, “hmm, you know what, this is tricky, I can’t decide. Let’s let some lawyers, witnesses, a judge and jury slug it out, and let some other poor saps decide what’s right.” Per Kevin above, is a sort of “grand jury nullification” playing out before our eyes? Or are people on grand juries just stupider than ever when it comes to following instructions?
Shygetz
@Belafon: It’s still a serious conflict of interest. Let’s say a DA gets an indictment, but the cop gets acquitted. Did the DA throw the case to preserve good relations with the cop? And changing cop recruitment/retention is great, but it still doesn’t remove the inherent conflict in prosecuting cop crimes. We need a system that removes investigation and prosecution of suspected cop crimes from the law enforcement system being investigated. Special prosecutors, investigations run by state or Federal police, etc.
FlipYrWhig
@NCSteve:
But did you see what she was wearing? That skirt was an incitement to rape/murder/cannibalism!
Scott S.
@NCSteve:
No, I’m going to have to go with stalk, rape, murder, rape, and then eat an attractive rich, white college girl.
Ehh, depends on whether her skirt was too short. If she was wearing a short skirt, she was clearly just asking to be raped and cannibalized. Besides, it’s just a gurrrrl.
Now, if he’d stalked, raped, murdered, and eaten a high-ranking Republican senator, you might get him prosecuted…
FlipYrWhig
Also, I wonder if part of the reason why contemporary cops are so jumpy and escalation-prone is that… they never know who might be carrying a gun.
celticdragonchick
@Sherparick:
Good catch on that, since I didn’t have the book in front of me. Thanks.
David in NY
@burnspbesq: What he’s saying has nothing to do with your straw man. He’s saying that in some circumstances, just protecting police can be a loser for a DA. For example, a guy like Charlie Hynes, Brooklyn DA for decades, got handily beaten in substantial part because he refused to reevaluate egregious police misconduct that led to many wrongful convictions.
This can happen. You may think unlikely, but it can happen.
gwangung
@J:
According to wikiepedia, certain types of choke holds induce muscle spasms and jerking in 90% of the people they were applied to.
So, no, you DON’T have voluntary control. And the only way to stop “resisting”….is to die.
Lavocat
You want The Line? Here’s the fucking line:
Pissing or shitting on the corpse while it is still warm – but only if you’ve been captured on video tape.
By multiple witnesses.
None of whom are non-white.
In broad daylight.
And so long as the victim and his extended families have absolutely no criminal histories.
SFAW
You liberals make me want to puke.
What none of the lamestream media will tell you is that IF Garner had been a violent man, and IF he had been “hopped up” on those drugs that you Libs all seem to like, and IF he were built like Jadeveon Clowney, and IF he had been carrying a concealed AR-15, then the police MIGHT have been in danger.
So the police were fully justified in a preemptive
murdermostly-gentle remonstrance.[SFAW, channeling samiam (and generic Reichtards in general)]
David in NY
@FlipYrWhig: Sure. But Garner had no gun. Darren Wilson didn’t say his victim had a gun. Better explanation — some police officer are out-of-control jerks, and should have been fired long ago. Both to get rid of them and pour encourager les autres, as the French say.
Lavocat
@Justin: WINNER!
celticdragonchick
@FlipYrWhig:
It s also a bullshit concern. Last year was the safest for cops since 1875. The 70’s were far more dangerous for cops when they mostly dealt with .32 “saturday night specials”.
Policing does not break the top ten most dangerous jobs in America. In fact, most police injuries are from vehicle accidents.
chopper
it’s ironic that you can indict a ham sandwich but not a pig.
SFAW
@Lavocat:
Nor granite countertops in their kitchens
FlipYrWhig
@David in NY: @celticdragonchick: Oh, I know, I’m not saying it’s a reasonable concern, but I started wondering if concealed-carry and other aspects of “gun rights” culture were feeding this hair-trigger police-panic culture in a vicious cycle.
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: I think it’s impossible to overstate the role that plays in this vicious circle. And what a huge obstacle it will be to any meaningful reform.
Cacti
@Matt McIrvin:
And that’s on top of the $400,000 of “charitable contributions” he got as a negro-slaying bounty. And he got all of that even though he was on paid leave, and his legal bills were picked up by his union.
A white cop can be made rich for killing a black male, if it’s sufficiently high profile.
SFAW
@Scott S.:
Sorta fixed.
Except there would still probably be no chance of indictment. Of course, if the Senator were a Demoncrat, that would change things …
J
@gwangung: That’s extremely interesting and what I expected.
One angle that I’m glad to see being emphasized by Atrios and Digby, among others, is the fact that police encounters–certainly with non-violent, unarmed people–that end in the death of the suspect should be viewed as failures of police professionalism and skill (as well as a crime). Someone more able than I am to assemble video clips should pair clips of Garner’s strangulation (and Kelly Thomas’, and, and, and…) with others in which policemen who know what they’re doing–I’m sure there are many–de-escalate a situation.
Lavocat
@chopper:Damn! Well said! I want THAT on a t-shirt!
David in NY
@NCSteve: A quibble. Nobody claimed the cannibal cop was acting in the line of duty, like the cops we’re talking about, and his status as a cop or actions as a law enforcer had nothing to do with that case, as it does in these. It’s just not a comparable situation. And he didn’t harm anyone. He got prosecuted and convicted at trial, and had his conviction overturned because of lack of evidence he had done anything but talk. Not admirable, but only questionably a crime. Still on appeal by the government, too.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: Maybe those are the seeds of a grand bargain then: police chiefs and civil rights activists working together to get guns off the streets.
David in NY
@FlipYrWhig: I don’t think this is any worse than it ever was. I’ve been hearing about cases like this for decades. I mean, Amadou Diallo a couple of decades ago got shot 41 times when he reached for his wallet to identify himself. Oops!
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: That might have been possible before things got so damned polarized — didn’t Clinton work with national police organizations to ban assault weapons? (I seem to recall that.) But now, unfettered access to all types of guns has become a holy sacrament to Republicans, so any compromise is off the table.
Ben Cisco
The line will be crossed when LARGE ENOUGH numbers of Caucasian (aka “Real”) ‘Murkans are subjected to the same treatment by the police as black men are.
When they are just as uneasy at the approach of a member of law enforcement as we are.
As we walk down the street.
In the grocery store.
In our vehicles, either on the road or parked, EVEN IN FRONT OF OUR OWN HOUSES.
When they are as fearful about their children making it to adulthood as every parent/guardian of a black male is.
When they fall in large enough numbers to get the Natalie Holloway treatment.
In short, when they become as legitimately concerned for THEIR lives are we are for ours.
And not one fucking nanosecond before then.
AxelFoley
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
BOOM! Would definitely be an indictment there.
RaflW
@burnspbesq: A couple of thoughts.
1. The two strategies are not mutually exclusive. Yes, each takes capacity by organizers, citizens and activists. But I don’t see this as an either/or.
2. If a couple of high-profile D.A.s could be swept out, either by mass-movement pressure for resignation, or by targeted election campaign, has at least some broader effect. These D.A.s are, I’m sure, watching each other. You don’t think unseating a couple D.A.s wouldn’t be all over the annual http://www.ndaa.org conference?
Shakezula
@Betty Cracker:
Fear of what, now? Crime by the plain old criminals who face arrest and jail time if they’re caught (and you’re allowed to fight if they attack you), or crime by the ones in uniform who have complete immunity?
AxelFoley
@dmsilev:
This would work, too.
AxelFoley
@Belafon:
Now it gets you hundreds of thousands of dollars from supporters (see, Zimmerman, George and Wilson, Darren)
El Caganer
@Ben Cisco: This sounds true. And by then, it will be too late.
Joel
@David in NY: you can’t choke hold in wrestling. You need at least an arm in control, for this reason exactly.
schrodinger's cat
@dmsilev: OT question do you use LaTeX on IPad?
the Conster
@celticdragonchick:
I’ve heard that, and could use a cite. I’m in the midst of that discussion with some random asshole on the internet.
Captain C
I’m guessing something along the lines of sodomizing the prosecutor’s daughter. On camera. With a hired band. Maybe not even then unless it’s posted on pr0n sites.
Shakezula
@the Conster: Have you tried OSHA/BLS?
Mnemosyne
@David in NY:
I can’t remember if it was a commenter here or someone else who said it, but someone said the other day that the difference is that these stories of police brutality used to be local news, but now they’re national and even international news. Both Ferguson and the Tamir Rice story are getting huge coverage overseas, especially in Great Britain (the BBC and the Guardian have been all over them).
Betty Cracker
@Shakezula: My theory is that fear of crime by regular criminals is one factor that leads people to tolerate police heavy handedness. Like I said, I think the fear of crime is way overblown, but it seems to exist.
scav
@Mnemosyne: Somebody linked to that tweet by Neil deGrasse Tyson I think.
David in NY
@Mnemosyne: That sounds right. The nationalization of police brutality. Garner might have made national news in the past (hey, it’s NYC!), as I think Amadou Diallo and Abner Louima may have, but Ferguson? I doubt it.
David in NY
@Joel: Exactly.
kc
Maybe if one shot Cliven Bundy?
Shakezula
@Betty Cracker: It’s also easier to tolerate when your fear is fed by the racism you share with the people who are tasked with the job of defending you from the oogaboogas. (Shitty cops are a small price to pay for knowing Bugbuggery, MS is defended from the brown hordes.)
Or you aren’t in the position to do anything about it because you’re the one who can be killed if you make some dickhead nervous. (Which isn’t tolerance, it is powerlessness.)
If police killed whites with as little provocation and as frequently as they do blacks … I’d be writing this from the back of my flying unicorn, Elmer.
AndoChronic
I don’t know, but I have a feeling I know what it’s going to take to get them under control.
David in NY
@Betty Cracker:
I think we accept the arbitrary exercise of power by police (against us!) not because we think it’s necessary to prevent crime, but because we know the authorities will back up the cops, not us. I mean, Darren Wilson had many complaints made against him, Pantaleo has civil case brought against him and nobody did anything until they killed somebody, on video. We know this, so we must be afraid.
But I don’t think anybody thinks it’s necessary to control crime generally, and certainly not if directed against themselves. They think it’s necessary to control them, because they’re really scary.
AxelFoley
@Ben Cisco:
Aye, verily.
Cheap Jim, formerly Cheap Jim
@the Conster:
http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshcfoi1.htm
Try the chart “Occupation by event or exposure, 2013”
SFAW
@schrodinger’s cat:
I never would have pegged dmsilev for being a Senator from Louisiana. I thought he was a lot smarter than that.
Arclite
@ruemara:
Yeah, but most cops don’t kill blacks. Reason being that the paperwork’s a bitch.
schrodinger's cat
@SFAW: LaTeX is markup language used for typesetting beautiful documents, especially ones with mathematical equations. As a physicist I it is highly likely dms uses it, hence the question
celticdragonchick
@the Conster:
Good graphic here that goes back to 1900
http://fee.org/blog/detail/by-the-numbers-how-dangerous-is-it-to-be-a-cop
Shakezula
@David in NY: We could also discuss words like “we” and “tolerate.” I think that as a whole, the white We “tolerate” bad policing in the same way someone would tolerate an attack dog. Sure Fido is a bad dog and sometimes he may even give you a nip, but he reliably savages brown people (who are all dangerous criminals even if they aren’t committing a crime) so it is worth it to keep Fido around.
The non-white we isn’t tolerating it, it generally feels powerless to do anything about it.
lol
@J:
Great video of UK police (who for the most part don’t carry guns) dealing with a crazy guy swinging a machete around.
They patiently box him in with wheelie bins and riot shields until he can be physically restrained. No one ends up dead. Comments are full of Americans screaming that they should’ve just shot the guy.
the Conster
@celticdragonchick:
That’s what I’m looking for – thx.
louc
@Citizen_X: Not if the cop is black.
PIGL
@Goblue72: “Half our fellows are mean spirited, authoritarian bullies.”
This. And the oligarchs have learned to take that proportions of citizens and unite them politically; that’s what’s happened to Canada. Harper’s Conservative Party is an entirely new entity designed to rally the vicious pricks.
The fact that political proclivities, and personality disorders, follow a multi-modal distribution seems to me to undercut the entire enlightenment project, and all the later Frankfurt School thought on legitimation and internal communications. I am more and more of the opinion that there is no solution short of re-examining the notion of universal suffrage.
J
@lol: Commendable display of what should be high on the list of qualities every policeman should have, patience!
Glidwrith
@Shakezula: Not Fido, but FIBS (Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear) :
https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/A_Declaration_of_Conscience.htm
mclaren
Testifying to police corruption or testifying against fellow police officers for brutality.
This has been another edition of “simple answers to simple questions.”
Geoff Dewan
Based on current evidence I would say there might be an indictment if they shot a rich white guy.
Sad_Dem
@AxelFoley: A Latino cop murdered a white man in Fullerton–on camera–and got indicted. The jury acquitted him. So I suppose we’ll have to wait for a black cop to murder an employed, no-criminal-record, Republican white man who was watering his lawn in a suspicious manner, and for that cop to beat up the little-old-white-lady neighbor who recorded it on her phone, before we see if a cop can get convicted of murder. Any bets on how long we’ll have to wait for that?