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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: 3, Insightful) by dry on Sunday March 25 2018, @04:06AM (3 children)
Perjury is actually a hard case to convict as it means someone intentionally lied rather then just being mistaken or such. We had the Robert Dziekański affair here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dzieka%C5%84ski_Taser_incident [wikipedia.org] some years back where the RCMP tasered some poor Polish guy to death at the airport. Luckily a bystander videoed it. Lots of evidence of bad practices, lots of evidence of the cops conspiring to lie, various charges dropped and finally one cop was convicted of perjury and one got off. There was quite a bit of talk about how hard it is to actually convict someone of perjury, eg no reasonable doubt. Along the same lines, the corporal involved in that case ran someone over in a separate incident while probably drunk. He claimed to have ran home, had a few shots of vodka IIRC, and returned to the scene. All they could get him on was obstruction of justice, a much more minor charge then causing death while DOI.
As for investigating the police, we (BC) now have the Independent Investigations Office, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Investigations_Office [wikipedia.org] the fourth in the country. Civilians who investigate any death or serious injury caused by a law enforcement officer while on or off duty. It's better but still depends on the Crown to actually lay charges and it has failed in at least one obvious case, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_shooting_of_Merhdad_Bayrami [wikipedia.org] where charges were laid and then stayed.
The shitty thing is after the charges were stayed, the Chief of the Police was going on about how great it was and how you couldn't have the police being judged, even for excessive use of weapons.
The whole culture is one of the Police are always right, from the top down. Back to the Robert Dziekański affair. The Polish government was quite upset about one of its citizens being killed and tried to investigate. Our government of the day, right wing at the time, unilaterally suspended the mutual legal assistance treaty with Poland and refused to cooperate.
Considering how hard it is to hold the cops responsible here in Canada, it seems like it would be next to impossible down there.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 26 2018, @04:50PM (2 children)
Yes. There are shades of gray in the world.
At the extreme ends of that gradient is black and white.
Some cases of "perjury" are obviously black, even though it is still technically a shade of gray.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday March 28 2018, @12:20AM (1 child)
The problem is the no reasonable doubt thing and the fact that cops are experts at throwing out a reasonable doubt when they're on trial or witnessing for a fellow cop.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:20PM
Cops are also excellent at making "reasonable doubt" work the other way when they want to shoot someone because of hate, or maybe just out of spite, or simply for sport.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.