New York Attorney General Eric Schniederman wants special prosecutor authority to go after police for killing unarmed civilians, but there’s a hell of a lot standing in his way: Republicans controlling the state Senate, NYC district attorney offices, NYPD police unions and who knows where Gov. Cuomo will come down on the subject.
While the Assembly, dominated by Democrats, has passed bills in the past allowing the attorney general to investigate and prosecute alleged police misconduct, similar measures have failed to advance in the Senate, where Republicans were recently elected to a clear majority. On Monday, Scott Reif, a spokesman for the Senate Republican leader, Dean G. Sklelos of Long Island, had no immediate comment on the attorney general’s proposal.
The governor’s office also had a measured response to the attorney general, who has had an often chilly relationship with Mr. Cuomo. In a statement, Melissa DeRosa, Mr. Cuomo’s communications director, said the attorney general’s proposal was being reviewed, even as the governor pursued a “broader approach that seeks to ensure equality and fairness in our justice system.”
The proposal received immediate pushback from police unions and several district attorneys in New York City, particularly in Brooklyn, where a grand jury will soon be impaneled to hear evidence in the fatal shooting of an unarmed man by an officer patrolling with his gun drawn.
Describing himself as “adamantly opposed,” the Brooklyn district attorney,Kenneth P. Thompson, said in a statement that the voters elected him “to keep them safe from all crimes, including those of police brutality.”
District attorneys in the Bronx and Queens also defended their ability to prosecute cases involving police officers, while the Manhattan district attorney has said, in general, he would remain open to discussing the idea but has expressed reservations about special prosecutors’ lack of accountability.
A spokesman for the Staten Island district attorney, whose office presented Mr. Garner’s death to a grand jury but did not secure an indictment, declined to comment.
Now I’m automatically leery of any “Special Prosecutors” in a general sense, they’re almost always political witch hunt tools. I’m not sure where Schniederman is going on this, other than the fact that Gov. Cuomo has proven that being a New York’s Attorney General and being in the news a lot for high-profile cases is a pretty good path to the Governor’s mansion.
On the other hand, actually indicting cops for killing unarmed people and making those cops face actual legal consequences is at some point going to be necessary to stop this police brutality idiocy. It will help dial down this mentality where black and Latino neighborhoods are seen as hostile territory that needs paramilitary pacification, too.
If that’s the outcome of all this, then by all means give Schniederman his chance to do the right thing. I don’t have a lot of hope however. There’s too much opportunity for grandstanding here with this. The federal investigation into the Garner case I have more faith in but even that has a political component to it now with Brooklyn US Attorney Loretta Lynch being tapped as Eric Holder’s replacement.
We’ll see where this goes, if anywhere.
Nicole
I think that’s the value of it- the fear that they might get in legal trouble could make them think twice before immediately pulling out the gun and firing. Or frighten their superiors into better training for them.
Patricia Kayden
It’s a great idea to have special prosecutions for police killings. But if you have mostly White juries still letting the cops off, not sure if special prosecutions will solve that problem.
Omnes Omnibus
Not at state and local levels. Ken Starr was an aberration, not an exemplar.
Omnes Omnibus
@Patricia Kayden: A special prosecutor solves one problem, the conflict of interest that a DA has when going after the police with whom they need to work on a day to day basis. It doesn’t fix everything. Not fixing one problem because other problems exist is a mistake.
ETA: Also, you don’t know what grand and petit juries would do if the case is presented to them by non-compromised prosecutors.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Aside from eliminating the conflict of interest, I’d also be wary about establishing an entirely different set of criminal procedures for police killings than for other homicides.
OzarkHillbilly
Nudge nudge, wink wink, know what I mean know what I mean?
rikyrah
Go Mr. Attorney General
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Appointing a special prosecutor isn’t a new thing. They would still need to present to a grand jury or court at a preliminary hearing. It is just a question of who is presenting; I think we have reached a point where it cannot be assumed that a DA’s office can credibly do the job.
skerry
@Baud: Not an attorney, but it seems to me that we already have a “entirely different set of criminal procedures for police killings than for other homicides.” That seems to be the root of the problem.
Baud
@skerry:
It is, and I don’t think it should be solved by instituting a formal set of separate procedures for cops, except where justified, as in the case of conflicts of interest.
Belafon
I think one of the things the police are missing is the threat that they might be prosecuted if they injure someone else. Yes, they are allowed to use force, but they should still be held accountable.
Gin & Tonic
@OzarkHillbilly: Actually, Brooklyn DA Thompson was elected last year on a fairly liberal platform – he turfed out the incumbent, Charles Hynes, in the Democratic primary (basically the general election, in Brooklyn) by running to his left. Plus, Hynes was facing a lot of criticism for being too close with the ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders, leading to reluctance to investigate or prosecute sexual abuse cases in that community. Many people viewed Thompson as a breath of fresh air.
skerry
@Baud: It seems to me that all of the cases of police killings that I am familiar with (again, not an attorney), there is an inherent conflict of interest in the current grand jury system.
If you disagree with the NY AG idea, what do you propose to address this problem?
The Other Bob
Why hold grand juries at all? Not all states seem to have them. Its seems like they are just a tool of the prosecutor to avoid responsibility no matter which direction the jury goes.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Other Bob: Some states’ constitutions require them, as does the US Constitution.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: Ken Starr was basically given orders to fuck up the Federal Watergate-era special prosecutor position up really good, and he delivered.
OzarkHillbilly
@Gin & Tonic: I admit that I know nothing about the man outside of his position as DA, but the problem is that people with power are loath to give it up whether they exercise that power or not. That is a problem that transcends politics or parties.
debbie
@Omnes Omnibus:
This takes a distant second to a “Listening Tour,” such as the one being launched in Cleveland to address police abuses.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/12/cleveland_city_council_to_hear.html
OzarkHillbilly
@Omnes Omnibus: A grand jury is not required. DAs have the discretion to charge or not on their own. Grand juries seem to be used most often when there is a political component.
Just Some Fuckhead
This is key. Cops aren’t going to alter their behavior until there are consequences. Every time we let one of them off, we all but guarantee someone else will be killed.
rikyrah
LocalSouth Side Entrepreneur Plans On Pouring Millions Of His Own Money Into Mayoral Campaign
December 8, 2014 6:35 PM
HICAGO (CBS) — A South Side millionaire could turn out to be the X-factor in February’s Chicago Mayoral Election.
Dr. Willie Wilson grew up picking cotton, but he ended up reaping millions as a successful entrepreneur.
CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports the self-made multi-millionaire plans to spend up to $3 million of his own money, which could energize South and West siders already upset with Mayor Emanuel, but until now were without a community candidate to back.
He is not even the best known of the little-known challengers, unless you talk to his benefactors, among them, ministers who were at Wilson’s campaign kickoff on Monday.
“He’s given me his heart and he’s given me his checkbook,” said Rev. TL Barrett of the Life Center Church.
He has no political experience and has never run for office. Of course, neither did Bruce Rauner, who Wilson endorsed in a campaign commercial.
“I happen to think he is a good human being,” Wilson said. “I didn’t look at him as a Republican.”
Wilson’s his own video crew was there today, gathering footage for upcoming TV spots the two-to-three million dollars campaign plans to spend.
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2014/12/08/south-side-entrepreneur-plans-on-pouring-millions-of-his-own-money-into-mayoral-campaign/
rikyrah
This seems to be a big story that is not getting a lot of attention
………..
Hackers Release Another Wave Of Sony Data
International Business Times
Thomas Halleck 5 hrs ago
The hacker group behind the attack on Sony Corp.’s film division released another mass of private data on Monday, including a number of corporate emails. The group, which calls itself GOP or “Guardians of Peace,” threatened Sony Pictures Entertainment with further action if it releases the comedy film “The Interview.”
GOP said Sony management has “refused” to comply with its demands on filesharing service GitHub, often used by hackers as an anonymous bulletin board. The data includes a purported collection of emails from Amy Pascal, chairman of Sony Picture Entertainment’s motion pictures group, and Steve Mosko, president of Sony Pictures Television.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/hackers-release-another-wave-of-sony-data/ar-BBgwKdK?ocid=HPCDHP
Omnes Omnibus
@OzarkHillbilly: No.
karen
I’m automatically leery of the words “grand jury” because it means that yet another cop will get off on shooting unarmed black men for sport. What else can be the reason to kill unarmed black men?
OzarkHillbilly
@Omnes Omnibus: No to what?
Kay
@debbie:
It’s so bad. It just gets worse every day. If it is true that they were handcuffing and threatening to arrest family members, including his 14 year old sister, while that child was dying they are going to need more than a special prosecutor.
It’s horrifying. I cannot imagine any adult reacting that way to that situation. WTF was the “threat” at that point?
Barry
@Omnes Omnibus: “ETA: Also, you don’t know what grand and petit juries would do if the case is presented to them by non-compromised prosecutors.”
Since grand juries are pretty much a tool of the prosecutor, we do know – they’d indict officers who were clearly negligent or malicious.
Omnes Omnibus
@OzarkHillbilly: My original statement was accurate. I am on my phone right now so I can’t link, but go to google.
Bobby B.
Re grand juries, was a “Rockford Files” from the 70s that said it all. Unusual when the TV industry was/is based on kissing law & order ass.
Keith G
@OzarkHillbilly: @Omnes Omnibus:
Incomplete as my knowledge is in this area, I thought that some jurisdictions could use a preliminary hearing instead of calling a grand jury (as in the O.J. case).
Cacti
@Kay:
As far as the wrongful death suit goes, I think Cleveland PD is going to get crushed. Officer Loehmann’s personnel file from Independence PD will be in evidence, and the memo from his Deputy Chief recommending his termination is just brutal:
“He could not follow simple directions, could not communicate clear thoughts nor recollections, and his handgun performance was dismal.”
“Emotionally immature,” “pattern of indiscretion and not following instructions,” “inability to manage personal stress,” and “loss of composure during live range training”.
“I do not believe time nor training will able to change or correct these deficiencies”
And all of that was from 2012.
OzarkHillbilly
@Omnes Omnibus: My ex is currently doing 7 years, never a grand jury. There is a phrase: Prosecutorial discretion, meaning prosecutors have discretion on whether to prosecute the charges being filed by police. Prosecutors generally go thru the arraignment process to avoid using grand juries. IANAL so I am unsure whether that is a go-round that defense attorneys accede to or not, but grand juries are most definitely NOT required for all prosecutions.
If grand juries were required for every prosecution, few would ever be convicted because prosecutors would be spending all their time in grand juries.
Cluttered Mind
Schneiderman has earned the benefit of the doubt as far as his intentions go, I think. Remember that he was the loudest voice calling for actual true punishments for the banksters, and the only reason he wasn’t able to do it is because he was cut off at the knees by their allies in Washington. I haven’t seen any reason to believe that he isn’t sincere in his desire to correct injustice, and if he also thinks there’s a political gain in it for him somewhere I don’t see a problem in that. Aren’t we as liberals always saying that good policy and good politics should go hand in hand? If he’s able to boost his profile by actually succeeding in indicting (hopefully even convicting!) some killer cops, I’d count that as a good thing.
Bobby Thomson
@rikyrah: I think a lot of reporters and/or media owners don’t want to facilitate North Korea’s extortion of Sony.
Bobby Thomson
@OzarkHillbilly: Omnes didn’t say all states require a grand jury. He said some do. It’s in their constitution, and in the U.S. constitution.
ETA: so the fact that one wasn’t required in a particular prosecution somewhere in the country doesn’t rebut that. In your state, grand juries aren’t mandatory, but different states have different laws.
burnspbesq
@Omnes Omnibus:
Two observations.
1. All of this discussion about special prosecutors implicitly assumes that the current state of affairs with respect to grand juries, i.e., that any competent prosecutor can get an indictment against a ham sandwich, is objectively a good thing. Well, no. The framers were mindful of the abuses of Americans by Crown prosecutors during Colonial times, and intended the grand jury as a check against unaccountable prosecutors. There is plenty of informed opinion, including but not limited to the ABA Criminal Justice Section and the NACDL, to the effect that the grand jury reform that is needed is exactly the opposite of what folks are clamoring for right now.
2. All the special prosecutors in the world won’t make a damn bit of difference without changes in the law governing self-defense and the use of force by cops (including changes in the rules regarding qualified immunity). Those changes can only come from state legislatures, and won’t come unless and until we can convince them that they have more to fear, electorally, from us than from the ammosexuals.
Lee
@rikyrah: Why do I think this is has now become a giant marketing campaign for that movie?
Jack the Second
Oh look, Cuomo selling out his party has already had an impact.
Omnes Omnibus
@Keith G: @OzarkHillbilly: You should note that my original statement was that some state constitutions requie grand juries. Nowhere have I ever said that all states require a grand jury for every indictment.
beth
O/T but I hope Richard Mayhew is watching the House Oversight Committee grilling Jonathon Gruber. I’d love to hear his take on it – my take is that they’re being huge dicks, as usual. Apparently being paid to consult to the government is now “taking advantage of the taxpayers”.
Cluttered Mind
@burnspbesq: Even if eventually they do have more to fear from us electorally, they’ll still have the fear of meeting George Tiller’s fate. You can’t really have a political debate where one side is waving guns around. Even if you win the political debate, they still have their guns, and if they were mentally stable to begin with they probably wouldn’t have been waving them around like that.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
The problem is that there’s already a de facto different, much more lenient, set of procedures for investigating police homicides. I’d rather make there be a de jure different set of rules that aren’t quite so lenient than leave things the way they are.
srv
By now in his presidency, Clinton had had a Special Prosecutor for years.
Obama is clearly not trying hard enough.
Harish
How dare you insult that unions are anything but promoters of human rights. Fascist.
Zandar
@Cluttered Mind: That’s a fair argument. He’s been cut off at the knees by Cuomo repeatedly too while trying to do the right thing.
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
This. The level of proof required to convict a cop is much higher than it is for an ordinary civilian; add public deference to the police and it’s ridiculously hard to get a conviction even with a dedicated prosecutor who’s really pushing for a conviction.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@OzarkHillbilly: That’s not actually correct. I’ll not bore you with a long explanation repeating why, as I assume Omnes has already handled that.
Appointing a special prosecutor is not a different set of criminal procedures; it’s been done for decades. It’s a way to remove a conflict of interest and we’ve seen recently how critical it can be. Having said that, in my opinion the greater the distance from the regular players the better.
An example locally is a special prosecution team who just tried a local judge was a bit too local themselves. Both are tremendously skilled and respected criminal lawyers, and both began – as many do – in the county prosecutor’s office decades ago. They were (imho) too local because they have both represented the current County Prosecutor personally, although in 2003.
I know both of them, and have no doubt that it did not affect their legal judgment; I’ve known and tried (or negotiated) cases with them for a long time. But they are too local in the sense that it appeared they weren’t untangled from the prosecutor’s office. In this particular case that appearance was critical. But that’s an outlier.
Mandalay
Oh the ironing.
Mnemosyne
I was kind of surprised to find this out (I think it was Roger Moore who clued me in), but the culture of the LAPD has changed enough that they actually decided that one of their officer-involved shootings was not justified. It was the shooting of a white guy, but at least it’s a start.
Cacti
Mafia Mayor Rudy Giuliani now blames teachers’ unions for white cops’ propensity to kill youthful minorities.
Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo and Bernie Kerik. Those are your law enforcement legacies, Rudy.
scav
The landscape of watching supposedly professional organizations and individuals convince themselves that a looooooonnnnnnnnngggggg, sychronized and public whine about how people are being meeeeeeaaaaannnnn and unfair to the bebadged ones by voicing dissatisfaction and expecting same individuals to submit to the same rules they personally are (in theory at least) enforcing, well, . . . Mean, self-serving and self-protecting are rapidly being joined by the descriptors childish and, sheltered and — well, toddlers of the most unpromising type about covers it. I’m beginning to wonder if real badges aren’t awarded by appearing in random distributions of Froot Loops.
Roger Moore
@Cacti:
Party of Personal Responsibility!
Cluttered Mind
@Cacti: Louima doesn’t belong on that list. He actually got some tiny measure of justice for what was done to him.
Mandalay
O/T For those hoping Bush, Cheney et al will feel some pain from the Torture Report, that ain’t gonna happen. I suspect that they will be portrayed as innocent victims of the duplicitous CIA….
Roger Moore
@Mandalay:
What they don’t mention is that the White House was easy to mislead because they wanted, even demanded, to be lied to. As long as the CIA was lying, the White House had plausible deniability. If the CIA had ever come close to telling the truth, Cheney et. al. would have stuck their fingers in their ears and said, “Lalala! I can’t hear you!”
Mandalay
@Roger Moore: Of course what you state is true, but Republicans are largely off hook in this report from what I have read so far, at least with respect to talking points on the Sunday shows. The CIA is the big bad bogeyman.
It will be interesting to see what is in the response that the Senate Republicans will be releasing, but the optics of them refusing to participate in the creation of this report are not good for them. I think Democrats can use that in 2016.
Roger Moore
@Mandalay:
I don’t. This report will be a big deal for a few turns of the 24 hour news cycle, then quickly forgotten. By the time the 2016 elections roll around, only political junkies whose minds were made up long ago will remember it, and the Republicans will be able to brush off any attempts to talk about it as old news.
Patricia Kayden
@Mandalay: But Cheney is always on my TV running his mouth about how torture worked and “kept the American people safe” or words to that effect. Cheney wasn’t misled by anyone. He would have tortured “terrorists” himself if the opportunity ever presented itself to him.
drkrick
Given the results of the “accountability” in place for regular prosecutors in these cases, I’m willing to take my chances.
The Other Chuck
@burnspbesq:
Wouldn’t giving grand juries greater independence from the DA’s office tend to work both ways? A DA indicting a ham sandwich and a DA throwing the case would seem to be two sides of the same coin.
The Other Chuck
@Cacti: I say let Rudy keep running his mouth. Pretty soon I’m sure he’ll go blame the Trilateral Commission too.
MCA1
@burnspbesq: Agreed on 2, but I think your point 1 is too contrarian by half. No one’s suggesting that, as a whole, the grand jury process and standard become simpler for prosecutors. What they’re clamoring for is a way to ensure that prosecutors take advantage of the current very low standard for indictments not only when the defendant is a civilian, but when they’re a cop. We can tackle whether or not the evidentiary standard for a grand jury indictment should be beefed up as a separate discussion, but for the time being, (a) it is very easy for a DA to get an indictment in almost any homicide, and (b) whether or not there’s a different standard for self-defense when applied to police, the only conclusion one can reasonably come to in the Garner and Brown cases is that they just didn’t want a trial.
I also think that there would be some deterrent on behavior added just by putting more cops on trial. Even if their affirmative defenses routinely win the day in a full trial, the individual emotional trauma that must accompany being on trial for any sort of homicide has to be pretty overwhelming. I think most people would alter their behavior to be sure they’re never faced with that big of a gamble on a jury/lawyers. The message we’re sending now, however, is “You have impugnity, because the DA’s a friend of the cops. You might be brought in front of a grand jury, but you’re never gonna be put on actual trial no matter what you do.”
burnspbesq
@MCA1:
But the current low standard is fucked up. Are you actually saying “fix it, but not until we hose these guys?”
MCA1
@burnspbesq: No. I’m saying “Go ahead and fix it if you like, but in the meantime, use it consistently by having someone who’s not in bed with the PD bringing actions against cops.” Perhaps you feel every indictment is an injustice under the current system because of the application and interpretation of probable cause. But a system in which one class is categorically spared that injustice is arguably even more inequitable and corrosive than one that is uniformly injust.
mclaren
That’s why it’s not going to stop.
On the contrary — the police brutality idiocy will get more and more extreme, it will ramp up to the point where people with badges drive around in their cars shooting random bystanders on the street for sport, the way police do with poor kids in the slums in Rio de Janeiro.
And then the police abuse will get more extreme.
Expect police to start raping women during no-knock raids — and get away with it. Expect police to steal cars and jewelry during arrests without probable cause — and get away with it. Expect police to shoot dogs, babies and children during mistaken-identity drug raids — and get away with it.
You people just don’t have any clue what has been unleashed with the abandonment of the rule of law.
When you throw out the law, the police turn into bandits. They feel free to rape and rob and kill at random because…why not? There are no consequences, and nice people generally don’t become police in American society. In my high school, all the most sadistic school bullies became police officers. When you give those kind of people carte blanche to commit whatever crimes they want without consequences, what do you expect to happen?
Get a fucking clue, people!
After 9/11 we converted from a civilian democracy to a garrison state operating under undeclared martial law, ruled by a military-police-prison-surveillance-torture complex.
In the security state, there are no citizens…only suspects.
In the security state, there is no law…only overwhelming force.
In the security state, there is no justice…only survivors after the shooting stops.
Police in New York after the brutality against Occupy protesters started wearing T-shirts that said WE GET UP EARLY TO BEAT THE CROWD. Har har har. Yuk yuk, it’s all hilariously funny.
You now live in a security state. It’s going to get worse. A lot worse. Expect summary executions on the streets and a security “officer” informing your wife and daughter that they need to service him if they don’t want to see you shot for “resisting arrest.”
And expect to see this become standard operating procedure, the norm, nothing unusual for police or TSA or DHS or any other mugger with a badge — unprosecuted, unremarked-on, never even mentioned in the press.