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From the New York Times:
The [Bronx] court sealed the case file, hiding from view a problem so old and persistent that the criminal justice system sometimes responds with little more than a shrug: false testimony by the police.
[...] "Behind closed doors, we call it testilying," a New York City police officer, Pedro Serrano, said in a recent interview, echoing a word that officers coined at least 25 years ago. "You take the truth and stretch it out a little bit."
[...] An investigation by The New York Times has found that on more than 25 occasions since January 2015, judges or prosecutors determined that a key aspect of a New York City police officer's testimony was probably untrue. The Times identified these cases — many of which are sealed — through interviews with lawyers, police officers and current and former judges.
In these cases, officers have lied about the whereabouts of guns, putting them in suspects' hands or waistbands when they were actually hidden out of sight. They have barged into apartments and conducted searches, only to testify otherwise later. Under oath, they have given firsthand accounts of crimes or arrests that they did not in fact witness. They have falsely claimed to have watched drug deals happen, only to later recant or be shown to have lied.
[...] Many police officials and experts express optimism that the prevalence of cameras will reduce police lying. As officers begin to accept that digital evidence of an encounter will emerge, lying will be perceived as too risky — or so the thinking goes. [...]
Yet interviews with officers suggest the prevalence of cameras alone won't end police lying. That's because even with cameras present, some officers still figure — with good reason — that a lie is unlikely to be exposed. Because plea deals are a typical outcome [...]
"There's no fear of being caught," said one Brooklyn officer who has been on the force for roughly a decade. "You're not going to go to trial and nobody is going to be cross-examined."
[...] Police lying raises the likelihood that the innocent end up in jail — and that as juries and judges come to regard the police as less credible, or as cases are dismissed when the lies are discovered, the guilty will go free. Police falsehoods also impede judges' efforts to enforce constitutional limits on police searches and seizures.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @05:39PM (12 children)
What does "Police" mean? All of them? Most of them? A small percentage of them? Very click-baity if you ask me.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @06:15PM (6 children)
Too many of them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @06:55PM (2 children)
No, it's not "a percentage" of them nor "many of them" nor in any way a measurement of individuals.
It's a group, they act as a group, the group protects its members, the group puts pressure on its members to behave a certain way, and part of that certain way is to act without ethics in the effort to strengthen a case or to protect other group members against accusations of (and therefore in many cases exposure of) wrongdoing.
"Police" means the cohesive fraternity of law enforcement officers, for good or bad, often bad.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @11:34PM
the group puts pressure on its members to behave a certain way
That is learned behavior after training and some time on the job.
Radio/TV presenter and author Thom Hartmann was a private investigator for a couple of years.
In order to do that, he had to take training at the police academy (in Georgia, if it makes a difference).
In the academy, he said that he found that about a third of the guys were really jazzed about the notion of serving society; about a third liked the notion of steady work with a nice pension; about a third were abusive jerks.
As the saying goes: One rotten apple spoils the whole bunch.
A 45 year old movie explains how it happens:
If you're a cop and you turn in a bad cop, subsequently, when you get in a jam and call for backup, no one comes.
Undercover officer Frank Serpico gets shot in the face [youtube.com] (Video now DMCA'd)
More clips [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 25 2018, @08:29AM
What about the shop keeper who didn't see nothing, or the several witnesses who refuse to testify or involve themselves in anyway. There is plenty of blame to go around
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Sunday March 25 2018, @12:50AM (2 children)
Any is too many, but in reality there are more than 700,000 cops in the US and 99% of them mean well and do their jobs to the best of their ability. Hopefully as Dave Chappelle put it the era of just sprinkle some crack on the guy and call it a day will come to a close.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 25 2018, @01:10AM (1 child)
99%srems a bit generous. I'd follow the 90% rule established by the guy who started an honor system corporate bagel program. 10% of people will cheat the system when there is no oversight.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Sunday March 25 2018, @07:51AM
I subscribe to the standard bell curve. 20 % will go out of their way to actively do good. 20% will go out of their way to screw you, and 60% are cruising around on automatic trying to avoid getting involved, but the sentiment is the same.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @06:51PM (4 children)
Only "click-baity" if you're an authoritarian pig apologist with a tongue coated with boot polish.
0.1% of cops are the truly rotten asshole pigs. These are the pieces of shit you see on YouTube videos and read about in the local news. These are the pigs shooting unarmed citizens and trying to hide evidence of wrongdoing and manufacturing "probable cause" after the fact.
0.9% of cops are the good cops. These are the cops that are trying to stop the rotten cops. You never read about them, and sadly they don't last long once the police unions get done with them. Once a cop decides to become a good cop, his/her days on the force are numbered.
That leaves the remaining 99% of cops that don't do the shit the rotten pigs do but also turn a blind eye to it. These are the bad cops. They are bad for allowing the rotten pigs to continue. Most of them won't turn into rotten pigs themselves, but a small handful will. Hope to whatever supreme force you believe in they don't decide to cross that line while involved in an encounter with you.
So, when you encounter a police officer on the street, you have a less than 1% chance of encountering a good cop. 99.1% of them are either bad or rotten. The "It's just one bad apple!" argument? Yeah, the pig apologist assholes who say that conveniently leave off the last part: "...spoils the whole bunch."
Think of it this way: you are handed a jar containing 1000 M&Ms. 990 of them are old, stale, tasteless, and have a very slight chance of giving you a mild case of food poisoning. Nine of them are normal. One has been laced with enough potassium cyanide to kill you. Care to eat an M&M?
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Sunday March 25 2018, @12:56AM (1 child)
Care to support your numbers with any sort of 'facts' ?? By my experience 99% of those posting as AC's are retarded inbred assholes with personal axes to grind. Think of it this way, if you are handed a jar containing 1000 M&M, who stole the jar and why are you accepting stolen property ?
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 25 2018, @01:13AM
You don't pay much attention to logged in users then eh?
(Score: 2, Funny) by minegoat on Sunday March 25 2018, @02:32AM
Why are you giving out poisoned M&Ms? What the hell is wrong with you?
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday March 25 2018, @07:04AM
Remember Trayvon Martin, the guy with the Skittles? My son Donald Jr. -- very innocent guy -- says the so-called Syrian refugees are like a bowl of Skittles. Because some of them will kill you, but you don't know which ones. Very hard to find out about those people because Syria is such a mess. They might be bad or sick guys, maybe not even from Syria. There's no way to tell.
But our Police, we know who they are. And they're great guys. Very nice, a lot of times they're too nice. I tell them, don't be too nice. We've got MS-13 on our streets, they're animals. They've transformed peaceful parks and beautiful quiet neighborhoods into blood-stained killing fields. So don't worry about nice. Like when they put somebody in the car and they’re protecting his head, you know, the way they put their hand over, like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody, don’t hit their head, I said, "You can take the hand away, OK?"